Friday, October 9, 2009

Growing Ridge Gourd - My experience!


Hello,

Wondered why I was out of action for quite a while? No marks for guessing. I was at the garden, trying to experiment. I am amazed at Nature. So disciplined, so perfect (Unlike us).

I bought ridged gourd seeds (a handful of them for 5 Rupees [Indian]) and sowed them in my backyard. Lo and behold, the creeper started growing real fast. It has stretched all across my compound wall(with timely interventions by me to keep it on the wall). In less than a month, it has given me four nice, long and ready to cook. No fertilizers, no compost. Just water it and it keeps growing.
The Ridge Gourd is called Gisoda or turiya in Gujarati , Beera kaya (బీర కాయ) in Telugu, Heeray kayi in Kannada and Peerkankai in Tamil.
Nutrition Value:Ridge gourd is low in saturated fat and cholesterol, high in dietary fibre, vitamin C, riboflavin, zinc, thiamin, iron, magnesium and manganese. The nutritional value of gourd makes it suitable for maintaining optimum health, weight lose. It has excellent cooling properties.
How to cook Ridge Gourd:
Ridge gourd can be cut into slices and fired in batter like our chilli bajjies. A healthier option would be to make gravy out of it. Fry some onions, tomatoes, garlic with some salt and chilli powder. Add some cubed ridge gourd and let it cook on a simmering flame. Add half a cup of milk and let the gravy thicken. After removing from flame, season and serve hot.

1 comment:

  1. my gourds are turning yellow within 3-4 days of their appearance at the end of the flower. How do I get them to grow ? Abonymous

    ReplyDelete

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