Lagenaria "Serpente di Sicilia" (calabash)

Calabash (Long melon) "Serpente di Sicilia" - Lagenaria siceraria L.
The crop requires rich and well-fertilised soil. Provide support on planting. Young fruits are used like courgettes.
Fruit can be cut continuously, the remainder of fruits on the plants do not rot.

The fruits of the indian cucumber Calabash have excellent taste and high dietary qualities. When the fruits are still small (25-30 cm long),
they are eaten like ordinary cucumbers and are not inferior to them in taste. From the grown fruits, which reach 2 m in length and weigh 7-10 kg, various dishes are prepared.
After removing the peel, you can make a salad with vinegar. This cucumber is fried like zucchini - in oil. Olive oil is best suited for this purpose.
It is used to make excellent caviar, delicious sauces, and even porridge with milk.
The fruit grows incredibly fast: 8-10 cm per day. The long melon grows under favourable weather conditions until the deepest autumn, until frost.
As a true southerner, he loves a lot of sun and heat and prefers loose and well-fertilized soil.
Depending on the place of cultivation, this or that technology of cultivation of this miracle cucumber is used.
The indoor method of growing Indian cucumbers is most often resorted to by citizens who have neither summer cottages nor garden beds.
It can be grown in the spacious corridors of hospitals and schools, in hotel lobbies...
What is required for this?
First of all, you need to stock up on an appropriate wooden tub or box with a capacity of 10-15 litres. The bottom must have a hole to drain excess water.
The tub (box) is filled with soil prepared from two parts of fertile garden soil and one part of rotted manure (soil from greenhouses and greenhouses is well suited).
One or two glasses of wood ash or four or five tablespoons of finely ground chalk are added to this mass. All this is thoroughly mixed and the tub is filled with the mixture.
If the tub or box is without legs, then they are placed on pieces of brick or wooden blocks. A small flat vessel is placed under the tub (box) to collect seeping water.
The plant is placed at the brightest window. Since the Indian cucumber grows strongly in height and width, the growth of its green mass must be regulated:
at a certain time, the upper growth point is removed from the central stem and side shoots (lashes).
The verticality of the plant is maintained with the help of cords lowered from the window eaves: the plant clings to them with its tendrils.

Eng.: Calabash, Long Melon. Suom.: Pullokurpitsa. Sven.: Ätlig Kalebass. Bot. syn.: Cucumis bicirrha Forster ex Guillemin, Cucumis lagenarius Dumort., nom. nud., Cucumis mairei H.Lev., Cucurbita lagenaria L., Cucurbita leucantha Duchesne, Cucurbita longa hort., Cucurbita siceraria Molina, Lagenaria lagenaria (L.) Cockerell, nom. inval., Lagenaria leucantha Rusby, Lagenaria vulgaris Ser.