Snake Gourd

🌿Plant Care Guide

📝 Description

Snake gourd, an annual herbaceous with trailing vines, is also known as serpent cucumber, viper gourd, and chichinda. Its flowers are fragrant with white delicately fringed hair-like petals, and fruits 30-150 cm long, narrow, cylindrical, slender, and pointed at both the ends. The snake gourds have two basic shapes- the first one has long narrow fruit that is tapered from top to bottom, and the other type has the same width from top to the bottom.Like other cucurbitaceous crops, it needs a warm and humid climate for best growth. High humidity is favourable for growth and fruit development. It cannot be successfully grown above an altitude of 1500 meters.The most ideal soil for snake gourd is rich loamy or sandy loam soil. However, other soils can be used, as long as they are well drained and rich in organic matter. Snake gourd fruits are very long, slender, and soft, thus, training is an essential practice to allow the fruits to grow downward and to keep them straight. Vines are trailed on a high trellis to avoid fruit twisting or coiling. The plant training over bower system is considered the best for this crop. Overhead trellises are made at about 2.0 M height. A small weight can be tied to the bottom end of developing fruit to make them grow straight.