I am by no-means an expert gardener; in fact, there was a time where I considered myself someone with a black thumb. With that said, there are a few plants that we started in January of 2021 that I was super excited for—one of them being loofah (or luffa–the spelling is interchangeable!).
Loofah’s are part of the squash family. They require a really long growing season—which we definitely do not have here in western PA (Zone 5b). I’ve mentioned before about one of my first eco-friendly swaps being a loofah sponge for our kitchen dishes, and once I discovered loofah sponges to wash my dishes, I was obsessed with the all-natural sponges that were compostable and ACTUALLY worked!
Only to find out that growing them in Zone 5b would be less than easy–wah, wah, wah. But I was determined. I watched every YouTube video on growing loofahs, read all the articles, and dove right in. Now, in preparation for next year’s growing season, I want to share everything I’ve learned so that you can grow these amazing plants/sponges, too.
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Table of Contents
Loofah (Luffa) is a Vegetable
Luffas are part of the squash family. So think: cucumbers, butternut squash, pumpkins. Basically, the amazing loofah sponge is the cousin to pumpkins! They vine, with their vines sometimes growing up to 30 feet long. We chose to grow all of our squash on a trellis this year to try to save space in our garden (spoiler alert: it did not work and the squash took over everything—and I LOVED it). The loofah really loved the trellis and soon took over, growing like crazy!
Also, as part of the squash family, if you choose not to trellis them, they will create additional roots at nodes (bends in the vine) when they are touching the ground; this helps create a stronger plant, in my opinion, since the entire vine has access to more water and nutrients.
Warmer Climate Needed
Most seed companies, blog posts, and articles that I read indicated that loofah is a tropical/sub-tropical Zone 7 or higher plant (meaning: the loofah can only grown in a warmer climate). There were a few articles that stated luffas could be grown in Zone 6, if started early indoors. Only a handful of articles (in the deep recesses of my google search) said it could be done in Zone 5b. The reason: loofahs prefers plenty of sunshine, hot summer temperatures, adequate water, well drained soil, AND a long growing season. The growing season in western PA (zone 5b is northwestern) runs from roughly June 1st to September 30th. We might be able to plant somethings in mid-May, and our first frost typically occurs around the second week of October.
I knew if I wanted to grow my own loofah sponges that I would have to start my plants indoors, super-EARLY. So I started those little plant seeds in January, in a little greenhouse kit, under a grow light. Since they require higher temperatures (75-85 F) to germinate, I planted 12 seeds with the hope of a 50% germination rate. We got 6 of the littlest baby seedlings after about three weeks—I was ecstatic!
We babied them in the indoor greenhouse, under the grow light until mid-May. At that point, I knew I wanted to harden the plants to the daytime temperatures of 50-60 F. Similar to hardening off pepper plants, we started off with 1 hour a day, at the warmest part of the day. After a couple days, we moved to 2 hours, and so on and so forth. After two weeks, they had been outdoors during the day, and brought in every night. At the start of week three, we moved the seedlings from the porch during the day to the greenhouse at night. The first weekend in June we planted those babies!!! And I was still super worried about the 50 F night temperatures.
We planted ours about 12 inches apart, and trellised them (at this point, our seedlings were about 8 inches tall with big leaves). And they grew like crazy. The bees really loved the bright yellow flowers and a couple days later, we had little baby fruits starting.
Honestly, besides watering them once or twice in June (our driest month this year), we did nothing else for them. It started getting cold in September (60 F during the day and 40/50 F during the night) and I was worrying a little bit about my plants. At this point, we were harvesting our driest luffas. And we pulled all the plants when it was maintaining 40 F during the night.
Loofah Fruit can be EATEN
Something we did not actually try this year, but the loofah can be eaten as a squash vegetable when young (4-8 inches in length). You can apparently sauté them like zucchini. I don’t know what they taste like or how they cook; that’s a project for next year. What I can tell you, is that the immature fruit smells spicy, the way black pepper smells spicy, for lack of a better term.
HARVESTING and DRYING
I will definitely not proclaim to be an expert at any of this, least of all the harvesting and drying. There were a couple loofah gourds that we were actually able to let dry completely on the vine. We peeled those immediately and fell in LOVE with luffa all over again (seriously can not say that enough)! We rinsed off the sap, composted the peels (you can get started here), shook out the seeds (to save for next year, obviously), and set them out on a baking rack to dry completely.
Most of the other loofah fruit we tried to let dry on the vine, but after a couple days of rain we were worried about them starting to mold (remember loofahs like hot temperatures and lots of sunshine). We pulled the driest ones, peeled most of them immediately, and dried them on our counter on baking racks. We experimented with the last three we picked when we pulled out the the vines and let them dry in the basement without peeling them. I’ll have to update you on how they do!
It really is that easy. And if I can grow it in Zone 5b with a three month growing season, then you definitely can too. I’m looking forward to using the loofah sponges. I’ve got a couple on tap to use on dishes in the kitchen. And I CANNOT WAIT to use it as a bath loofah with it’s exfoliating super-powers.
There are a bunch of other uses for them, and I will make sure to keep you updated on all the loofah soaps, sponges, etc. that I end up making! Let me know your favorite loofah use in the comments below.