I still don’t have a swingle female flower. Entire cattle panel trellis full of luffa vine and male flowers for month maybe plus? Anyone know if this falls into the realm of normal or I should rip this out? I could at least use the space for peas next month.
A lot of luffas are day-length sensitive and produce only male flowers until day lengths get shorter. There are some day-neutral varieties available, but many seed sources don’t explicitly state that information.
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Unless you have something else you would like to use the space for I would let them go. When I grew luffa (ridged type), I planted in May and didn’t have my first fruit until the end of August. They produce male flowers for a long time until eventually producing females.
They are also pretty rampantly growing vines and can self-crowd in a limited space. A friend of mine tried them on a trellis that was too small with several vines and they actually never produced, probably since the vines were just running back and forth across each other and shading leaves. So if you have a bunch of vines it might make sense to cut any “extras” off at the base and just let it die out so the remaining ones have more room. This is just speculation, but I notice the vines in the community garden that are productive are always on a pretty large trellis.
It may also be that they are triggered by day length to some degree. I know when I grew winged beans it wasn’t until the same time frame they began producing as well.
In the end mine wound up producing much more than I could eat and I gave a lot to the food bank.
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Thank you both for the explanations. I had no idea about the day length sensitivity, great to know. @GrapeNut do you have a good seed source for them? Very little info at the few legitimate places that sell them. I think mine came from southern exposure.
And, great to know @zendog that yours also produced male flowers for a long time. I have 2 vines on a cattle panel, but I can certainly thin them. I’ll let them be since this is normal!
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I get mine from Asian Garden 2 Table. They’re based in Florida and sell seeds of varieties that were selected for commercial production in the Asian market, rather than the generic varieties that most other sellers have. They usually have some maturity data in the variety descriptions. The stuff they carry is imported seed for farmers though, so it’s sometimes fungicide treated and definitely non-organic, if that matters to you.
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Main thing is does their ( Asian Garden) luffa seeds grow and produce luffa fruit ( pods)? I had some seeds I bought years ago that really grew well. The seeds I have bought in the past few years have not done anything as far as luffa fruit production. I am sort of tired of buying seeds that do not produce luffa pods.