February. A month of hibernation. Few things happen. Time for something different. Sort of a retrospective. A look back at 8 months adventure of growing and processing what to me was an unknown plant - a hechima. I mentioned it here and there and posted a few pictures over the last few months but now I'd like to pull the story together in one spot.

It started last year around the beginning of June. I had one hechima seed (in English known as luffa or loofah) and an empty slot in the rose bed (after one of the rose bushes died). I put the seed in the ground and about a month later had a plant with 4 or 5 leaves. It was vaguely reminiscent of a large cucumber. (Click on the images to see a larger version). And that was it. I am not sure exactly when, but sometimes in the middle of summer, its growth suddenly accelerated. First it took over the neighboring rose bushes and then the whole rose bed. I would clip it back once a week when I mowed the lawn but it always grew faster the succeeding week and started to expand into the surrounding trees and then into neighboring gardens. Ultimately it had a substantial presence in three neighboring gardens in addition to our own.

It had a lot of relatively large yellow flowers that were a powerful magnet for bees and butterflies. The insect traffic on hechima was always at least 5 times heavier than on any other flower around. Some of the bees were extraordinarily large, more like big bumble bees, but did not quite look like bumble bees. The luxurious hechima leaves provided living space for lot of other animals. Little lizards would sit on them and catch bees that came to the flowers. After the big flood, Kumiko found a beautiful little frog sitting on one of the leaves. Lots of brilliant yellow flowers but that was it. No fruit. I was beginning to be convinced that hechima needed a male and female plant for cross pollination and since I had only one I was out of luck.

As it turns out, it was probably temperature that was at fault. As soon as the evening temperatures started to drop a little bit at the end of August we noticed little fruits. Every week there were more and more. Not only did the number go up, but they were also beginning to reach respectable size. At first they looked like pickling cucumbers, then salad cucumbers and then they went beyond what any cucumber could be. Pretty soon we had big hechima fruits lying under every bush and hanging from every tree (not only ours, but neighbors trees as well).

This created a problem. I knew that a type of a bathroom sponge could be made from one of these oversized cucumbers, but I had no idea how. I searched the Internet, found out a lot of interesting information (the fruit is apparently edible) but no guidance on how to prepare them. I contacted some of my Japanese friends by email, but all of them are city people and did not really know. There is a Zen saying, which states that when the pupil is ready the teacher will appear. In this case a teacher appeared in the form a the wife of one of the Japanese geologists working on our floor. The description of the preparation made sense, even though I could not easily duplicate it in Houston. Apparently in Japan, ripe hechima is put into a net bag and dropped into a fast flowing stream where the moving water washes away the slowly rotting vegetable flesh leaving behind the spongy skeleton. They also gave me a valuable pointer on when hechima is ready to process - basically wait until the first frost.

The first killer frost arrived in early January. It was clear that the plant has passed on and it was time to harvest. One seed planted 8 months earlier turned into more than one totally overflowing wheel barrow. Next I had to soak the fruit in water and decided to accelerate the process by peeling away the skin after a few days passed and the decay already started. I was basically playing the role of the fast moving stream. Then back in the water for a few more days of soaking, rotting and fermenting. If you like sauerkraut you would have loved the smell. From time to time I would move things around by a strong jet of water, which produced a very good foam. There must be all kinds of interesting chemicals in this plant. Apparently in Japan it is also used as a base for a perfume. Repeating the process eventually removes all the soft flesh and leaves behind only the spongy skeleton. And then all that is needed is a few days on the drying rack and we are ready to open a shop!

Looking through the paper the other day I came across a short article. The Skin Cancer Institute, New York recommends exfoliating with loofah and thus removing skin sells with sun-related damage which could develop into precancers or cancers. When I went to give a sample of the product to the Japanese geologist who guided me through the process a Russian geologist was passing by. He said: "Where did you get that loofah?" We were surprised that he would recognize this quintessentially southeast Asian product, but apparently loofah is very popular in Russian banyas and everybody has one.








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