Vegetable · Cucurbitaceae
When to plant bitter gourds
A vigorous climbing gourd grown for the immature fruit, which is bitter by design and less so if picked young and pale.
Start seed indoors
4 weeks before
Counted from your last spring frost.
Plant out
2 weeks after
Counted from your last spring frost.
Sow direct
2 weeks after
Counted from your last spring frost.
Those weeks become real dates once you name a place.
Timing, in frost-relative terms
Seed packets rarely give calendar dates, because a date that suits one latitude is wrong at another. They give offsets from the last spring frost instead, and those offsets are what make bitter gourds plantable anywhere.
- Start seed indoors 4 weeks before the last frost.
- Plant out 2 weeks after the last frost.
- Sow direct 2 weeks after the last frost.
- Expect 70–90 days to maturity, counted from sowing.
Getting the timing right
Sow two weeks after the last frost onto warm soil, or start indoors four weeks before it. Grow up a strong trellis so the fruit hangs straight.
Frost tolerance
Killed at 0C and unhappy below 15C. In temperate summers it needs the warmest wall you have.
Classified as tender, with damage expected below 0°C (32°F)32°F (0°C).