Bottle Gourd Harvest

[lesa]

Oh how cute!! I never thought of them as Halloween decorations- but they are adorable! So, you don't dry them before you paint them? I always use mine, after a winter of drying... Off to see if I have a gourd that is "ghost shaped"!

 

[hoodat]

I love house wrens. They're one of the few birds that actually like to be close to humans. When I lived in my log cabin in Oklahoma my door was always open so I could accomodate wild critters coming to visit. I had one build a nest on the bedside stand and I helped raise the young by feeding them insects. She would sit on the nest even when I was up and moving around the cabin.

 

[lesa]

Oh, hoodat! Please, please write a book! You have had the neatest experiences! How sweet are you, helping to raise the babies??

 

[Cats Critters and Garden]

Oh how cute!! I never thought of them as Halloween decorations- but they are adorable! So, you don't dry them before you paint them? I always use mine, after a winter of drying... Off to see if I have a gourd that is "ghost shaped"!

You can but this paint can and will be washed off after Halloween. But to keep them year to year I would recommend that you dry them out first.

 

[hoodat]

Oh, hoodat! Please, please write a book! You have had the neatest experiences! How sweet are you, helping to raise the babies??

I have one book published but it wasn't about that. I never thought of writing about my homesteading experiences in Oklahoma. It's amazing how friendly wild critters will get given the chance.
Mostly I write humorous short stories just to amuse myself.

 

[hoodat]

AHA. There are your gourds at the top of the page. Nice pic. Show us some more when they get decorated. I sent some seeds for those gourds to a friend in Oklahoma but the hot dry weather wasn't too kind to them.

 

[Smiles Jr.]

I have always been amused by the birdhouse gourds. Do you bore the hole in the side and then try to get as many seeds out as possible? Isn't it difficult to get seeds out through this tiny hole?

I talked to the farmer down the road this morning and he said that he sprays his birdhouse gourds with Thompson's Waterseal every spring and every fall and he has some that have lasted 8 years. He never paints them. I should have asked him how he gets all the seeds out and cleans the inside.

 

[hoodat]

I have always been amused by the birdhouse gourds. Do you bore the hole in the side and then try to get as many seeds out as possible? Isn't it difficult to get seeds out through this tiny hole?

I talked to the farmer down the road this morning and he said that he sprays his birdhouse gourds with Thompson's Waterseal every spring and every fall and he has some that have lasted 8 years. He never paints them. I should have asked him how he gets all the seeds out and cleans the inside.

First be sure they are perfectly dry inside as well as out. Drill your entrance hole. The size of the hole has to be right for the species you want to inhabit it. this link will tell you the hole size for most of the commoner birds:
http://birding.about.com/od/birdhouses/a/birdhouseholes.htm

Once it is perfectly dry and your hole is drilled or cut insert something to scrape with. A long handled small cupped spoon such as an ice cream soda spoon works fine but look around and you can find something that will work. Work it around inside to break loose as much of the dried membrane and seeds as you can and then shake them out the entrance hole. you will probably have to do that several times. So long as you get most of it out you will be OK. The birds will finish cleaning it out if they accept the nesting gourd. You should also read up on location of the gourds and the height above ground different birds prefer.

 

[lesa]

I like the water seal idea... some of them have lovely patterns, when they dry and I've hated to paint over it! That sounds like the answer. It really isn't hard to get the seeds out. Once they are good and dry even shaking them around gets most of them out... and as hoodat says, a little scraping does the rest.

 

[Cats Critters and Garden]

AHA. There are your gourds at the top of the page. Nice pic. Show us some more when they get decorated. I sent some seeds for those gourds to a friend in Oklahoma but the hot dry weather wasn't too kind to them.

I'll be updating as holidays come up and they get painted or if we just get inspired. But I think I'm going to dry out the majority, try saving some seeds (I need to check if any thing they grew with could have cross pollinated) make some bird houses and holiday decorations.