Last weekend had been a really busy one for me. On 19 Dec 09, a Saturday, a day before the gardening Sunday at HortPark, I was involved in delivering a talk entitled ‘Edible Gourds for Your Garden’. This was a last minute talk that was put together to replace Boon Kiat’s talk as he was not able to give his cacti and succulents talk due to compassionate reasons.
In this talk, I shared with my audience one of my favourite group of edible plants that I have tried my hands growing them before. As the term ‘edible gourds’ suggests, my talk attempted to introduce the range of fruited vegetables that are members of the Cucurbitaceae family. Some familiar members of this plant family include cucumbers, bittergourd, luffa and bottlegourd. These constitute some of the most rewarding and easier species to grow here locally.
In my talk, I shared some tips based on my personal experience as well as problems encountered during the growing of some of these gourds in my community garden. The audience also got to know the sources to go if they are keen to purchase some seeds to grow some of these plants in their home gardens.
In the slide above, my audience got to know that some cucurbits have medicinal uses. They include the following plants:
1. Five-leaf ginseng (botanical name - Gynostemma pentaphyllum) is called ‘绞股蓝’ or ‘ jiaogulan’ in Chinese, which is possesses adaptogen and antioxidant properties.
2. Bittergourd, especially those with smaller fruits are said to have hypoglycaemic properties by many Chinese Singaporeans here. Fruits are juiced and the beverage drunk.
3. Winter melon slices are often sold as sugared, dried slices, which are used in herbal teas for their purported ‘cooling’ effects.
4. ’Arhat fruit’ (botanical name - Siraitia grosvenorii) is called ‘罗汉果’ or ‘luohan guo’ in Chinese where its dried fruits are used in Traditional Chinese Medicine.
5. Spiny bittergourd (botanical name - Momordica cochinchinensis) - The red aril around its large seeds are cooked with rice in Vietnam and the seeds which resemble the turtle shell (called ‘木鳖子’ or ‘mubiezi’ in Chinese) are also used in Traditional Chinese Medicine).
In another slide, I showed my audience two other species of species which commonly occur as weeds in Singapore which are largely ignored. Coccinia grandis also called the ivy gourd is a vine that produces white, star-shaped flowers and edible fruits that are sold in Little India. Another is a species of Melothria, which produces small yellow flowers and cute, oval fruits.
Despite the rain, locality of this library in the East as well as proximity of the date to a major festive day (that is Christmas), I saw only a handful of gardeners who made it a point to attend my talk at Tampines Regional Library’s Auditorium and I am very grateful for their support. I was happy to see a few familiar faces amongst the audience and one of them was Ms Nancy Ong who is a community gardener currently residing in Marine Parade where she showed me the fruits of her labour. She has successfully grown watermelons and honeydew in her community garden in her condominium.
Note that the pictures shown in my presentation slides still belong to their respective owners and are used then for illustrative purposes only.
