"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?