I have never had a desire to grow gourds in my garden. They just don’t seem very useful to me, even though the Park Seed catalog sells seeds that could enable me to grow my own loofah. Yes, a natural loofah sponge is really a gourd — after you grow it, you just let the skin shrivel off, revealing the network of fibrous matter inside, then cut off the ends and shake out the seeds and it’s bath time.

But today I learned from one of my favorite blogs, Garden Rant, that there’s a group of guys in Virginia who grow gourds for the purpose of fashioning them into musical instruments. They call themselves the Richmond Indigenous Gourd Orchestra. Their website makes the following statements:

The Richmond Indigenous Gourd Orchestra resides in Richmond, Virginia, where members grow gourds, make instruments and create music. A band of musicians with dirt under their fingernails–they put the “cult” back into culture, and “culture” back into agriculture.

Original music played on handmade instruments made from locally grown gourds, the Gourd Orchestra plays its own brand of paleolithic lounge music – mixing past with present, rhythm with melody, and chaos with order.

The website also allows you to sample the Gourd Orchestra’s music, which is actually rather pleasant and catchy in an odd, earthy kind of way.

And let’s not forget the gourd-growing tips. I looked them over, and it seems as if the seeds should have been in the ground weeks ago, but if you have a long growing season where you live, it might not be too late to get started. And if you’re already a veteran gourd-grower, please leave a comment!

Loofah image, above, courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.