How to Grow Ivy gourd

Coccinia grandis · Also called: Tindora, Tindori, Tendli, Tondli, Kundru, Kovakkai, Koval, Dondakaya

An ivy gourd vine in Mumbai, India, covered in five-lobed leaves and small white star-shaped flowers.

Photo: Dinesh Valke, CC BY-SA 2.0 (Wikimedia Commons)

Ivy gourd is about the fastest return a smallholder can get from a perennial. Push cuttings into the ground, give them something to climb, and they crop within three or four months — and then keep cropping every few days for several years off the same roots. Those roots are tuberous, so the plant survives a dry season that would finish an annual gourd and comes back when the rains do. It is a daily vegetable across India, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka and much of South East Asia, under a dozen names, and the young leaves are eaten as a green as well. For a household plot or a kitchen garden beside a wall, few crops give so much for so little.

Growing Ivy gourd, Stage by Stage

1. Get the land ready and put up a support — Free-draining ground, full sun, and a frame before the cuttings go in.
2. Get your cuttings from a fruiting vine — Stem cuttings from a plant you have seen carrying fruit, never seed.
3. Plant and train up the support — Bury most of the cutting, then guide the first shoots up.
4. Water, weed and feed — Steady water for steady picking, and feeding after every hard cut.
5. Prune and renew — Cut it back hard once a year, or it becomes a mat that fruits at the edges.
6. Flowering and fruit set — White flowers on female plants, each with a tiny gourd already behind it.
7. Watch for trouble — Fruit fly in the fruit, beetles on young leaves, and mildew in humid weather.
8. Harvest, store and sell — Pick young and green every two or three days, because it will not wait.

Common Problems & Troubleshooting

If you see: Vigorous healthy vines that flower freely and never produce a single fruit.

It likely means: They are male plants. Male and female flowers are on separate plants in this species, a plant is one or the other for life, and seed gives roughly half of each.

Do this: Look behind the flowers: a female flower has a tiny gourd already formed behind it, a male has nothing.

If you see: Fruit that is pale, fibrous, full of hard seeds, or already turning orange and red on the vine.

It likely means: It was left too long. Ivy gourd is eaten young and the window is only a few days wide.

Do this: Go through the vine every two or three days, not weekly.

If you see: A dense wall of leaf covering the whole frame with fruit only around the outside edges.

It likely means: It has not been cut back, or it has had too much nitrogen. An uncut vine becomes a mat that shades its own fruiting wood.

Do this: Cut the vine back hard once a year to a short framework.

If you see: Fruit with small punctures that goes soft and rotten, with maggots inside when opened.

It likely means: Fruit fly, which lays into the young fruit. The damage is invisible from outside until the fruit is cut.

Do this: Collect every fallen and damaged fruit and bury or burn it.

If you see: The vine climbing into trees, hedges or neighbouring land, rooting wherever a stem touches soil.

It likely means: It is doing what it does. This species smothers what it climbs and roots at the nodes, and it has become a serious invasive weed in Hawaii, parts of Australia, several Pacific islands and the southern United States.

Do this: Check whether it may legally be planted where you are before planting it at all.

If you see: Vines that yellow, wilt and die back, usually in the wettest part of the plot.

It likely means: The tuberous roots have rotted in waterlogged soil. This plant takes drought well and standing water badly.

Do this: Plant on ridges or raised pits where drainage is doubtful.

Yield & Market Value

Growing the crop is only part of the job. The last part is knowing what a normal harvest looks like where you are, and knowing what your ivy gourd is worth before you agree a price with anybody.

Remember It This Way

If you forget every other page of this guide, keep these lines. They are the whole crop, in order, short enough to carry in your head.

Male and female are separate plants. Only females fruit.
So take cuttings from a vine you have seen carrying fruit.
Never sow seed. Half of it will be male.
Build the frame before you plant. It grows very fast.
Wet feet rot the roots. Drought does not kill it.
It crops in three months and keeps going for years.
Cut it back hard once a year or it becomes a mat.
Pick every two or three days, young and green.
Red fruit is too late. It will not sell.
Check it is legal to plant where you are.

Test Yourself: Identification

What does an ivy gourd vine look like?

How do you tell a female plant from a male one?

When is the fruit ready to pick?

Honest Limits of This Guide

Timings here are given by season and by the state of the vine rather than in named months, because ivy gourd is grown across the tropics in both hemispheres. Count from the start of your own rains.
Coccinia grandis is a declared noxious or invasive weed in Hawaii, parts of Australia, several Pacific islands and parts of the southern United States, where it smothers native vegetation and roots wherever a stem touches soil. This guide says so plainly and tells growers to check the law where they are before planting it.
Whether a male plant is needed at all varies by region and this guide does not pretend otherwise. Many growers crop well with none; others find set improves with one among ten or fifteen. Ask locally rather than following a rule.
Yield figures per hectare are given because people ask, but most ivy gourd in the world grows on a few plants beside a house, and that grower is better served by the picking interval than by a tonnage.
This plant is widely used in traditional medicine and is the subject of many health claims. This guide makes none of them, is about growing and selling the vegetable, and anyone with a medical question should ask a qualified person rather than a crop guide.
This guide names no chemical treatments. The fruit and the young leaves are both eaten, fruit fly is answered mainly by picking up fallen fruit, and mildew by keeping the vine open.

Sources

GBIF Backbone Taxonomy species-match record for Coccinia grandis (L.) Voigt — Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF), Copenhagen (source)
EPPO Global Database — Coccinia grandis (EPPO code COCGR) — European and Mediterranean Plant Protection Organization (EPPO), Paris (source)
FAO work on traditional and underutilised vegetables and on post-harvest handling of perishable produce, with FAOSTAT production data — Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), Rome (source)
Coccinia grandis (ivy gourd) — CABI Compendium datasheet — CABI, Wallingford (source)

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