Grow Your Own Supply of Sponges

You may recognize luffa sponges (Luffa aegyptiaca, synonym L. cylindrica) from health-food stores, where they’re sold as exfoliators and displayed next to soaps, shampoos, and other bathing supplies. It’s easy to assume a luffa is a sea sponge, but it’s actually a gourd that you can grow in your backyard and process at home.

An annual, subtropical vine in the Cucurbitaceae family, luffa is a lush plant with large leaves, buttery yellow flowers, and fruit that looks like giant cucumbers. The young, edible fruits — which taste like a cross between a cucumber and a zucchini — can be harvested when only a few inches long for use in stir-fries, chutneys, and soups. When left to mature and dry on the vine, the fruit becomes quite large, and the edible flesh transforms into a fibrous woven skeleton with brown skin and rattling seeds. This textured skeleton is what we use as a sponge.

You can enjoy luffa sponges in place of washcloths, or use them to scrub dishes, scour surfaces, clean