How To Grow Lauki? Tips For Healthy Harvest Of Bottle Gourd

A home garden filled with the fresh produce of your favourite fruits, vegetables, or even herbs can be truly enriching. Just imagine waking up to the aroma of healthy crops and enjoying the highly nutritious and freshest yield right in your backyard. If you are a gardening enthusiast, you must add lauki, also known as bottle gourd, to your home garden.

Being a highly versatile vegetable in Indian kitchens, lauki could be a great add-on to your kitchen garden. Not only can you incorporate freshly harvested vegetables in curries and sabzis, but you can also use them to make rich desserts like halwa. So, what are you waiting for? Replace your grocery bag with lauki seeds and gardening tools to get the healthiest produce of the vegetable. 

Selecting Seeds

The first and foremost step to ensure a healthy harvest is selecting the seeds. There are a lot of varieties of bottle gourds available on the market, which include various shapes and sizes, such as short, round, elongated, etc. As per the weather conditions, you can pick the most suitable seeds for sowing in your garden. It is also recommended that you go for hybrid seeds, which are prone to yielding disease-resistant vegetables.

Also Read: Growing Cluster Beans At Home: Essential Tips To Keep In Mind

Preparing Soil

Since vegetables and fruits are highly nutritious, you need to enrich the soil with organic matter and fertilisers. To ensure that your home-grown lauki is healthy and filled with nutrients, it is best that you loosen the soil to a depth of 12-15 inches before sowing the seeds. Once the soil is prepared, add manure and maintain a pH between 6.5 and 7.5.

Spacing And Support

Given that lauki is a climber, the vegetable will require sufficient space to grow properly. To ensure that each plant has adequate airflow, try to maintain a distance of at least 1.5 to 2 feet between each plant. This will help in direct exposure of the plants to sunlight and also help prevent any fungal diseases.

Regular Watering

Bottle gourd requires consistent moisture to thrive. During the early stages of the plant, water it on a daily basis. Once the vine is established, you can decrease the frequency of watering based on the moisture content of the soil. You can also add mulch around the plant so that the water retention capacity of the soil increases.

Pruning And Harvesting

One of the most undermined steps while growing vegetables or fruits in a kitchen garden is pruning. Trimming the branches and removing dead leaves is essential for the healthy growth of any plant. Once the vegetable is green and tender, you can harvest bottle gourds. Since overripe lauki can lose its flavour and nutritional value, do harvest on time.