Bitter Gourd and Wax Gourd

Bitter Gourd (Karela)

Bitter gourd is often fried, but it has more nutritional and medicinal value if it is boiled or steamed.

• It is known mainly as a blood purifier.

To prepare bitter gourd seeds for sprouting, put the seeds in warm water, not boiling water.

After the water temperature has retuned to normal, soak the seeds for 72 hours. The seeds should then be sown.

Wax Gourd (Pat́ol)

Wax gourd originated in East India, in the Ganga basin in Saheb Ganj, Maldha, Nadia and Rajmahal. It belongs to the Indica group. 4000 years ago farmers developed wax gourd by crossing telekocho, a type of rhizome, with khundri, a variety of gourd.

New varieties of wax gourd may be developed by crossing kundri and telekocho with wax gourd, or wax gourd with bottle gourd.

Crossing the male wax gourd and the female khundri will make an even better variety. Telekocho is a good medicine for diabetes, while khundri is good for digestion.

Wax gourd leaves have a bitter taste, but the fruit is sweet. The leaves purify the blood and are a good medicine for insomnia and the liver.

The wax gourd leaves can be dehydrated to make a powder.

The vegetable itself can also be dehydrated. Plants grown from the seeds produced by the vegetable bear very small fruits.

Such fruits may be sweet or bitter, but the fruits grown from grafted plants are always sweet.

For cultivation, only grafted plants should be used. In fact, all varieties of wax gourd have bitter leaves.

There are several varieties of wax gourd grown in Bengal and Bihar and include:

• Peŕa pat́ol is found along the banks of the Damodar, Raina and Khandghosh rivers in Burdwan. It has a long fruit.
• Indigenous gourd has a long, whitish-green fruit with stripes that are always green.
• D́holak pat́ol has fruit that grows very large. It is less productive than the other varieties, but has good market value. Dorma is prepared by stuffing this gourd with fish.
• Whitish gourd (pashchimá pat́ol) which has a small, white fruit that does not taste very good.
• Greenish gourd

Wax gourd can be grown during any season. But its best planting period is between Month 6.5 and 1.5 .

It is good for many diseases and has some food value as well.

If wax gourd is grown in a field where betel leaf (baruj pán) is grown, its medicinal value will be increased. Betel leaf requires half light and half shade.

Wax gourd may be grown in sandy soil like melons, but the sandy alluvial soil is recommended.

When planting wax gourd cuttings, follow the same procedure as watermelons and musk melons. A pit one and a half feet deep should be dug in sandy alluvial soil and filled with a mixture of compost and soil in equal proportions, then the cutting should be planted.

The cuttings should be prepared so that each cutting has two intact nodes, one at the base and the other at the top. Each cutting should be planted so that it is slanting with respect to the ground, and the lower node should not be covered by soil.

After the wax gourd cutting is planted, it requires shade and proper watering in all seasons for the first 5-6 days while the new leaves appear. Within 7-15 days, a green sprout will appear on the upper node.

After that, it does not need much care.

The plant starts flowering after one month. In the evenings the flowers bloom all at once at 11:30 p.m. sharp. When the size of the fruit starts becoming small, the old plants should be removed and replaced by new cuttings. Good cuttings are available in Burdwan, Ranaghat, Beldanga, Monghyr, Farakka, Rajmahal and Saheb Ganj.

Wax gourd grows well if subterranean water is available, otherwise the fields will have to be irrigated.

Wax gourd is mostly grown along the banks of the Churni river in Ranaghat.

• But it may be planted along the banks of the rivers in Purulia district.

Snakes congregate wherever wax gourd is cultivated extensively.

• To avoid this, iishanmula should be grown because snakes are afraid of its smell.
• Snakes are also afraid of any copper salt, so they will not be found wherever there are deposits of this salt, as in Ghatshila and Mohabhandur (near Tata Nagar).
• Copper sulphate is poisonous for human beings.