one of the easiest vegetables you can
grow in your garden today's episode we
look at how to grow the ash gourd or
winter melon easily in grow bags so we
are starting our ash gourd seeds in
these seed starting cells it's a mix of
coco coir perlite and a little bit of
vermiculite and compost and we bought
our seeds on Amazon and I'll provide a
link to the seeds in the video
description and the comments below
it all we are doing is just laying the
seeds out and in about four weeks in
sowing
we'll be transplanting our seedlings
into this grow bag
if you remember this grow back this was
gifted to us by one of our YouTube
viewers and we are now putting it to
good use and this one plant will be good
enough to fit into this large grow bag
that we are using and two months in
sowing you can see that the plant has
grown well now and it will start
branching out and it will start
producing more shoots on the side as you
can see here
we used a complete fertilizer during
planting time and mix it into the soil
however you can use compost or manure or
pretty much any kind of fertilizer when
growing ash gourds
Asch codes are not very demanding as far
as fertilisers go and they will grow
into very healthy plants very soon as
you can see here
and they will start producing multiple
branches that will hang out from your
container these are the glue bags that
we are using here again and as you can
see here the leaves are pretty healthy
and they're also growing very well and
will start producing flowers very soon
you will see the male flowers coming up
first followed by the female flowers the
ash gourd plant has the male and female
flowers on the same plant and the male
flowers will usually come out first this
is the male flower as you can see here
there is no fruit behind it and the
female flower is this one that you see
here it's already pollinated and it has
a little fruit that's growing behind it
and that's how you distinguish between a
male and a female flower
and here you can see the female flower
again it has a little fruit on the back
and don't worry if you are not seeing
the female flowers they will eventually
show up and as you can see here four
months since we sold our seeds the plant
has now become pretty big little bushy
and is also growing this fruit the ash
gourd that you can see here now I just
put the vine down on the ground so that
the ash gourd has space to grow the
goads become very large this is also
called the winter melon plant and the
reason it's called the ash gourd is
something we'll see very soon and you
can see that the vines are pretty dense
and once you add the fertilizer during
the beginning of the growing season you
can add another round after about three
months
but this plant is not demanding I would
only recommend adding fertilizer if you
see weak growth for your plants and as
you can see here they will climb on to
any structure around them and you can
see that the ash gourd is now becoming
bigger and bigger as it is go by
and it usually takes about three to four
months and you can see here the reason
why it's called the Ash gold is because
of this ash like powder that's there on
the surface of the fruit so it's been
six months now and we are ready for our
first harvest and as you can see here we
are harvesting our first ash gourd and
as you can see beautiful looking winter
melon here
you can see all that ash on my hand
which is the reason why it's called the
ash gourd
and as i always do i will cut open this
ash gourd or winter melon and show you
how it looks like
and the skin is a little thick it's a
little hard to cut through the skin but
the edible part of the ash gourd is
actually what's inside so the thick skin
actually protects the ash gourd while
it's growing as you can see here from
the inside it has a lot of seeds and
luckily most of the ash gourds or winter
melons are heirloom varieties which
means that you can save their seeds and
then grow them into new plants in the
coming years
as you can see here this is the ash
gourd or winter melon the flesh inside
is pretty nice soft and this is one of
the most delicious vegetables you can
grow there are a lot of recipes you can
find for ash code or winter balance
online the way we like to cook it as
boil it with lentils and it tastes just
amazing
and as you can see here lots of seeds
and you can save the seeds we save some
seeds for subsequent plantings as you
can see here just take them in a paper
towel and dry them
and after harvesting you can see that
the plant will continue to produce more
goods can see one growing right here and
as long as the temperatures are not too
cold this plant will continue producing
more and more ash codes or winter melons
so there we have it folks that was our
episode on growing the ash code or the
winter melon
have you tried growing this vegetable
before do let us know in the comments
