Last time I wrote about my loofah plants, I talked about how to process the loofah gourds. Since then, I have picked my first two dried gourds, my first immature gourd to eat, had neighbors Mike and Jennifer Angelic over to learn how to process the dried gourd and how to make scrubbies.
I’ve read that you can eat the blossoms of the loofah, the seeds of a loofah, and the gourd itself when it’s young and tender. Until this year, I never did that because I wanted the gourds’ sponges. But with the recent rain, my vines have put on new gourds which will not have time to mature, so I cut a young gourd and shared it – raw – at a church meal.
This is a first for me – and the people I shared the green gourd with. So, I can tell you, it really tastes good. Its texture is similar to a zucchini squash, but it tastes like a mild okra. It gives a whole new meaning to eating enough fiber. I’ll have enough young gourds to try stir-frying them – another first. If the rest of the mature gourds make, I’ll have enough seeds to try eating them this year – we’ll see.
Of the four vines growing out of a five-gallon bucket on my back yard fence, the two gourds we processed were grown on one of the two more robust vines. I think these gourds were from the seeds from the heirloom seed catalog that Kristin Shirley sent me this spring because they looked more round and short than the loofahs I grew at River’s End a few years back and the fiber in the gourds was finer than those I worked with in the past. So, a new kind of loofah is another new thing I’ve experienced with them in 2025.
Jen and Mike wanted to know how the scrubbies were made, so they came over to help with the process. This was another “first.” Before, I did this process on my own with Roy kibitzing as I worked. The first thing you do is to take one day to process the dried loofah. Here’s what we did: rapped the loofah briskly on a table edge to loosen the seeds inside. (If you have a lot of gourds, you will have a lot of seeds – so you can eat some of them. I never have before but probably will this year – another first.) We then cut off the flower end and poured the seeds into a bowl. Most of the seeds were black – which means they were mature and will be viable for planting next year’s crop.
Next, we peeled off the dry skin and discarded it revealing the sponge you grew the plant to get. To keep the sponges from molding, we soaked them in a large bowl in a solution of warm water with bleach (10 parts water to one part bleach). Then Jen and Mike went home. I let the sponges set for about half an hour then rinsed them and set them out to dry. That’s the end of processing the gourds. You can store the dried sponges in an old pillowcase until you are ready to use them for scrubbies, bath sponges, or pot scrubbers.
The next day after church, Mike and Jen came by and we made scrubbies out of the two first gourds of the season. I purchased six pounds of microwaveable organic goat’s milk soap and two soap molds from Amazon.
I also had organic lavender, French vanilla and lemon essential oils to make our scrubbies smell wonderful.
This is the first time I had help making the scrubbies, so the process went fast. We made 13 scrubbies out of the two gourds and used all of the fiber – that’s a first for me. Mike sliced the loofah sponge into inch-sized pieces starting from the large end of the loofah. I placed the slices in the soap mold. Then, we microwaved the soap, until it became liquid. We used nearly three pounds of soap for this project. Once each batch of soap was melted, we stirred in either French vanilla or organic Lavender essential oils – my house smelled wonderful.
Once we added the fragrance, I poured the liquid soap over sponge slices in the mold. Then Jen and Mike went home because the soap had to cure before taking them out of the mold. The next morning, 13 bars of soap (with loofah slice inside) – scrubbies – came out of the mold and I stored them in individual slider bags. I then placed them on my marble kitchen counter to finish solidifying. They will stay in a cool place until I am ready to gift or use them. My doctor and her staff will get little scrubbies for Christmas – they’ve been listening to stories of my loofahs’ progress all summer.
In the meantime, I’ve ordered more organic goat’s milk soap and am considering more scents to try since it looks like there will be a bumper crop of loofah gourds this year. They’ll make a lot of scrubbies, pretty handmade gifts, and there will be a lot of gourd seeds to share next year. In fact, I’ve already sent a friend some of the seeds from the first two gourds – and Mike and Jen took some to grow next year. I love it! A growing gift that keeps on giving.
