Air Drying Gourds: Benefits and Drawbacks of Natural Drying

A three-month or more process of drying gourds by nature can be greatly accelerated by a few techniques we've learned through time and experimentation. In this article, we will look at the natural method of just letting them dry out over time and some of the benefits and downfalls to this process.

Gourds will dry out on their own given time. If you do not want to fuss with your gourds and wish to let them dry naturally, then probably the best and fastest natural method is leave them out during the winter. The cold winter air will not only help to suck the moisture out of them, but the snow and dampness will even help to remove the skin, thus making the cleaning process easier. The biggest problem with the natural method is as the gourds dry out, mold will grow on the surface of the gourd.

Do not put your gourds into an attached garage or into your home to dry. Gourds are 90% water, and they take a long time to dry out, 1-3 months for small gourds, 3-6 months for medium gourds, and some really large gourds can take a year. During this slow process the moisture slowly but continually leaches through the thick hard shell. Because of this, the shell is continually damp and mold will grow on the surface. Mold is bad for your health and some species of mold can be very dangerous, so the last thing you want is for mold to be sporulating in your home or garage.

Drying gourds outside, it is best to get them off the ground if possible, if you have some wooden pallets, they can be stacked on these. If not, gourds can be spread out or stacked in a pile on the ground until spring time. the problem with allowing gourds to sit on the ground is, the moisture in the ground will keep the gourds overly wet and insects that like to live underthings at ground level will eat holes in your gourds. one year we even had a gourd that got invaded by termites.

Once your gourd is dry, it will be very light in comparison to it's original weight, gourds are about 90% water. The shell will turn brown and will have lots of mold on it. When shaken, (wrap it in a damp cloth to do this to prevent the mold from spreading, and wear a mask), most of the time the seeds inside the gourd will break loose and will rattle, but this is not always the case.

The natural method of drying gourds will also leave a mottled surface. For people who paint or carve the gourds, this doesn't really matter much, however for those of us who enjoy pyrography, the dark spots can interfere with our design ideas. To get a more uniformly colored surface, try one of our other methods of curing a gourd like Rot cleaning, accelerated rot cleaning, green cleaning and green cleaning w/oven drying.

Gourds are an artistic medium. If you would like to learn more about gourds, please visit The Gourd Reserve, with over 800 pages of gourd related information and artwork. You can also find more short articles on gourds and growing gourds here on my AC producer page.