I planted bitter gourd (karela) and bottle gourds this year in my vegetable garden. The vines are creeping in all directions and bearing lovely flowers.
Bitter gourd and Bottle gourd
Bottle gourd creeping everywhere
I am getting a very nice produce from the bitter gourd plant starting with small pretty yellow flowers and converting into pretty spiky karelas. One of my colleague at work even described it as "kind a like dinosaur" due to its spike.
Spiky Karela - Bitter gourd
But all the baby fruits on the bottlegourd plant appeared to be rotting or dying on the vine or falling off the plant before developing into a fully grown fruit. I did a lot of search on Google and found out why the baby fruits were dropping off. The reason for this disaster was inadequate pollination. The bottle gourd plants produce both male and female flowers and are not self pollinating. They need help from pollinators to carry pollen ...
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