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Planting
Days to maturity
Seasonal yields
Sow indoors · Direct sow · Transplant outdoors
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Plant · P-210
Luffa
Luffa aegyptiaca
Luffa doubles as a vegetable and a sponge from the same planting: fruit picked young at six to eight inches cooks like cucumber, while fruit left another month on the vine dries into the fibrous sponge sold as a scrubber. Trellised, it climbs 30 to 50 feet on only a few feet of footprint, so a single arbor of it becomes real summer shade in its first season rather than the decade a tree would take. Its leaves and vine are also strong forage - goats browse it readily, and its pressed seed meal has replaced up to 15 percent of the soybean meal in farmed catfish feed with no drop in performance. The seed carries a bitter, purgative compound, so breeding cattle and sheep should stay off it, even though people eat the young fruit long before that compound concentrates.
Record at a glance
Growing profile
- Sun
- Full Sun
- USDA zone
- USDA 8–11
- Soil
- Sand · Loam · Clay
- Moisture
- Well-Drained · Moderate
Vertical layer
Vine- Soil pH
- 5.5–6.5
- Plant type
- Annual
- Mature height
- 30–50 ft
- Mature spread
- 12–36 in
- Plant spacing
- 12–36 in
- Root type
- Not yet recorded
- Spread pattern
- Seed
Keep exploring
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The deeper layer
Plan what comes next.
- Primary
- Locked ecological function
- Secondary
- Locked ecological function
- Byproduct
- Locked ecological function
Behind the record
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