Yeah, they run like mad-I grow mine on an 8 x 16 foot trellis, and a half dozen plants absolutely overwhelm it. they grow male and female flowers, be patient. many, MANY will grow at the same time.the flowers tend to open early morning, and the carpenter bumblebees did all the pollenating for me. It takes very little time for a fertilized gourd to reach drying size. last year, off of 6 plants, I probably harvested about 200 gourds. very prolific little things...

Wow-those sound cool. Post a picture for us to see when they grow Dot!
Robin

Thanks for the info, Kevin. It sounds like I will have to give my Spinners more to climb on than just the tomato cage. Do you get many seeds from your mature spinners? I have a few in my workshop and they don't sound as though they have any seeds in them?
I will try to post pictures later, Robin. Thanks for your reply.
Dottie

No problem - the spinning gourds seeds tend to be clumped up and tangled in a web of grass-like fibers. that`s why they don`t rattle. there`s usually between 20 and 50 seeds in each one. And, yeah, I get all mine from ones saved from the previous year.

Someone back in the hills told me that on old neighbor of his had a spot behind the barn where the little spinning gourds came up on their own every year. One year they didn't appear (more like there was probalby a really late frost that got them) and that was the end of them. Then 15 years later a plant came up and they were back again. Since people started talking about this gourd, seems like I keep finding them coming from different sources, as if they were here in TN all along, but it took good ol' SSE member Junior Gordon to put them back into the hands of commercial suppliers.

Should tennessee spinners be trimmed to 10 foot as I've read for other gourds? Or just let them go wild?

Mogardening,
I imagine you can treat these gourds like any other. I will sometimes cutback my vines and sometimes not. It all depends on the room that they have to grow. I understand that when you clip the vines at 10 feet that they will then put their energy in to producing gourds instead of growing.
Dottie