Welp, I’ve dodged a bullet. I’m not going to be forced to eat a sponge. Turns out the loofah plants Desiree planted in our garden can’t tolerate even a touch of below-freezing weather. This, despite our efforts to tent the plants in plastic and pitch a blanket overtop the evening before temperatures crashed into the twenties. By the next frosty morning, the plants had deflated and begun to dry out.
Mature loofah gourds are not exactly
the stuff dreams are made of, but they do produce a decent exfoliating sponge.
Before reaching that stage, though, young loofah gourds are edible. They’re
sometimes called vegetable sponges or Chinese okra. When cooked, they
apparently have a mild, slightly sweet flavor—something close to cucumber.
Our plants were just beginning to extend miniature gourds from a few desiccated flowers when the cold struck. No eating sponges this year.
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—Mitchell Hegman
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