Luffa harvest - free sponges

In the end of July of this year I planted a few Luffa plants, just to see how it would work out. It took about five months, as expected, to get to the most exciting part - the harvest. I learned a few things about luffa, one of them being, that we should wait for the fruit to be completely ripe. When the fruit changes color from green to light brown, it is time to pick.

Now comes the fun part, peeling the skin. When the fruit is ripe, as shown on these pictures, peeling is completely effortless. If you pick a greener luffa, peeling could be a challenge, but not a huge one. In the picture below the whole peeling process took maybe two minutes, the skin just falls off.

Once all of the skin is gone we are left with a sponge like this:

Now, the remainder of the flesh needs to be washed out; a garden hose works perfectly for this purpose. The seeds come out pretty easily as well, and in abundance. You could seed your whole garden next year with just the seeds from one plant. If you have chickens, they love these seeds.

Some people bleach luffa sponges, but I do not see the reason to add chemicals to the perfectly organic and usable product. These sponges are pretty hard when they are dry, but with added water, as you use sponges, they are just like luffa you can buy in the store.