Gourd or squash, how can you tell?

[journey11]

I'm disposing of the pumpkin decorations today, finally, and moving on to Christmas. I was wondering if some of these little ones the kids got might be edible. How can you tell? I am pretty sure #3 is a gourd, but it does smell good. Anybody recognize these varieties as perhaps something to put in a pie?

 

[Nyboy]

I don't know but #5 is my favrite looking one

 

[catjac1975]

I'm disposing of the pumpkin decorations today, finally, and moving on to Christmas. I was wondering if some of these little ones the kids got might be edible. How can you tell? I am pretty sure #3 is a gourd, but it does smell good. Anybody recognize these varieties as perhaps something to put in a pie?

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I think 3 is the only gourd. Give a tiny taste of each-will be sweet. Gourds are edible just not tasty.

 

[seedcorn]

If the flesh is soft, eat it.

 

[journey11]

Three and five definitely curled my tongue! I guess I will roast the others. I would have thought 5 was similar to an acorn squash, but I guess not. My mom told us as kids that gourds were poisonous. She told us that about everything though, lol.

 

[Nyboy]

My mother told us if you didn't keep your ears clean potatoes would grow in them

 

[Pulsegleaner]

Three and five definitely curled my tongue! I guess I will roast the others. I would have thought 5 was similar to an acorn squash, but I guess not. My mom told us as kids that gourds were poisonous. She told us that about everything though, lol.

The short answer, is, they can be. Gourds contain saponins, which can be poisonous in large enough doses, and taste awful in even smaller ones (saponins are in essence soap like compounds, or why you can use some gourd species (like the Buffalo Gourd) as a soap substitute.)

I usually go with a few thumb rules, such as if it has a woody shell inside of the skin, it's a gourd, though not all gourds (or at least not all things sold as gourds for the holidays) will have that.

#3 may be a gourd/pumpkin cross since it has a fair amount of "meat" under the shell (by the time they have that shell, most gourds have lost most of their inner meat, and basically have the seed cavity more or less abutting to the shell) My "ugly" pumpkin last year had the same thing.

Speaking of gourd "smells". This was a very weird thing that happened to me many many years ago, when I was a kid. One fall I found a gourd at my local garden center that, apart from being the size of a baseball, looked exactly like a honeydew melon. In and of itself, that would not be all that notable (it is entirely possible in the variability of gourd forms to get one that is round, smooth, and pale yellowy-white). The weird thing was that, when I cut it open at the end of the year, it SMELLED like a melon too (though it had normal "gourd" seeds, not melon ones) I am often sorry I was so young and not good at saving seeds, and at an age where tasting something was not something I'd do (My parents would not have approved of it, and I was an EXTREMELY obedient child.) I think I might have had something truly interesting there.

A year or so later, I though I found a mini watermelon gourd, but that WAS just a gourd (which happened to be oval and smooth with white and green stripes)

 

[Nyboy]

Journey what did you end up doing ?

 

[journey11]

Journey what did you end up doing ?

After tossing out the yucky ones, wasn't much left, so I fed them to the chickens. They'll eat just about anything!

 

[Nyboy]

I always miss my hens when cleaning out the fridge.