Half hardy luffa cylindrica?

Emerion · March 2022

My fun new plant this year is a loofah plant. The RHS call it half hardy and then recommend a minimum temperature of 15°C. I’m confused because I thought that half hardy plants would survive low temperatures, but not much actual frost. So if that’s the case, why is the minimum recommended temperature so much higher? I understand that “survivable” and “ideal” are very different things, but I’ve never seen that kind of gap before. Not that I’m an expert. Any thoughts?

fidgetbones · March 2022

Its cucumber family. If you treat it like a cucumber you won't go far wrong.

philippasmith2 · March 2022

Agree with @fidgetbones advice. The hardest bit IME is cleaning the fruit up to produce your own Loofas. Worth it in the end tho

Emerion · March 2022

Thanks @fidgetbones, I thought the seedling looked like a cucumber. I can do that then 🙂 So when you say that the hardest part is the cleaning @philippasmith2, how hard ?

philippasmith2 · March 2022

Sorry @Emerion I should perhaps have said Time Consuming rather than Hard as such. Once fully ripe, you will need to strip away the outer skin and then soak in warm water and keep squeezing them over a few days in order to be able to extract all the flesh and seeds. Once that's done, they will require several rinses to remove any "bits" which may still be clinging to the fibrous skeleton. Once that is achieved, a soak in a very weak bleach solution to clean and whiten them up. Then another long soak before squeezing and hanging up to dry.
It's a few years since I did mine but that was basically the regime I followed and those people I gave some to had no complaints. I'm still using mine too - quite satisfying when in the shower to talk to your Loofah and say " Remember when you were just a youngster ? "

Emerion · March 2022

Thanks @philippasmith2, I’ve made a note 🙂

Half hardy luffa cylindrica?

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