"Bird House" gourds

"Bird House" gourds must be the Godzillas of the cucurbit family. Mine (1) has gone nuts and I have been pruning it to keep it from hogging the entire 7' X 7' trellis. Has anybody else experienced this? It is inches from a kumquat tree and I presume from it's previous behavior, it will wrap the tree up it up like a spider does a fly, if I let it. So I guess what I'm asking is (1) Is this explosive growth normal?, (2) Does pruning create any other problems?, (3) Am I right in thinking that I need to control the vegetative growth so that the root structure won't squeeze-out the other plants on the trellis ( a jiaogulan [vinous ginseng, sorta] and a Tromba d'Albenga). Most of my soil, outside the beds, is rock hard clay and this particular bed is 8' X 5' with yarrow and pot marigolds.

I'm hoping the up-shot of it all will be fewer, larger gourds. Any second opinions?

Reply to
Billy Rose
Loading thread data ...

Birdhouse gourds given the right environment will take over the world. ;-) Don't worry about pruning them. I grew them for two years and ended up with 10 years worth of bird houses and kept them under control.

The house wrens love them...

My honeysuckle survived the gourds. Not so sure if it will survive the mustang grapes!

Reply to
Omelet

HomeOwnersHub website is not affiliated with any of the manufacturers or service providers discussed here. All logos and trade names are the property of their respective owners.