Our first developing green snake gourd!

It was my hope to gloat much sooner about growing the green snake gourd, but the fruits have been aborting one after the other. I initially thought that the green stink bugs had moved from sap-sucking the beans to the baby snake gourd fruits, but so far I haven’t caught any of the insects on the snake gourd fruits. Then I realized that the gourds looked similar to the aborted angled loofah fruits, and that’s when I realized that all the ants and insects I see scurrying on the vines aren’t doing a proper job of pollinating the female flowers. So, I decided to hand-pollinate the next female snake gourd flower that I saw.

Wouldn’t it just have to happen that the first growing fruit started growing without my help?

It looks very much like a developing cucumber right now, except that it’s covered in fine hairs instead of pointy spikes. I have no idea how long ago this fruit was pollinated, but I’d guess within the last week at most. The fruit is just over 5cm long, and I anticipate watching it grow much bigger. No, I’m not going to jinx it and state a size; I’ll wait and see what we end up with.

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