Comments by "Me Here" (@mehere8038) on "How 200,000 Luffas Become Kitchen Sponges | Big Business | Insider Business" video.

They should be proud of the size of their luffas! I grow my own luffas in my garden, but never have I had any even close to that size! Those are HUGE!
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@davidcorodeanu4535 the point is, in many settings, these are nicer to use than the alternatives, so they absolutely make a difference to the person using them. Really nice to use on your body when covered in grime from gardening, much better than the plastic alternatives that scratch & itch skin imo
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@theotheleo6830 different uses :) washcloth is for cleaning, luffa is for exfoliating & cleaning off ingrained dirt & grease & grime from a hard day gardening or car repairs or whatever - or just as part of a beauty routine & getting rid of dead skin cells too I guess
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not resistant to powdery mildew! I wish it was!
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@bellwethertrucking3650 wtf are you on about? Luffa skins are removed & disposed of before using as a sponge. No different to the hygiene in using something like coconut milk or water (coconut water's used in the place of IV fluids in poor/disaster areas too btw)
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I do find them hard to stop going mouldy over time though - at least for my home grown ones, possible bought ones might have something added to stop that I guess, I don't know, might be how they're stored too, but I've tried lots of options
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@VinegarPotato better option would be the ones the video spoke of, made of cellulose & hemp. That's not plastic! Cellulose is natural, so why can't we buy those 1940's ones, or a better version of them now? Doesnt seem to be any reason commercial manufacturers can't give us natural ingredient ones
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@PerceptionVsReality333 yeh, I've gotta say, in my experience luffa sponges go mouldy FAR quicker than any others, so I really do have to wonder if people are treating both the same way in storage & care, I'm guessing very much NO. There's also a range of widths in synthetic ones, so people should choose one that suits how they use it & should also be putting them through the washing machine regularly if they have smell or mould issues & aren't willing to use stuff like bleach to manage that. I use "wettex" for my uses where thicker ones mould up quickly & have a few I hang on hooks & alternate between, letting each dry between use. Mine always wear out well before having mould issues. Now if I could just work out how to store my luffas so that they wouldn't mould up!
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@shoemakerleve9 no! I mean I guess if you had a big enough space you could, but the plants are huge! Growing season's really long too. I grow in Sydney Australia, so temperate climate, but into subtropical nowadays with global warming, but I struggle to get them done in the growing season & REALLY struggle to control where they go. You need at least 8 metres or so of full sun space for the vine to grow in to get even 2-3 luffas off the vine in my experience. Try sweet potato if you want to test indoor growing ability & if you can produce 20kgs of so of sweet potato, then the space used for that should be enough to grow one luffa plant in (I grow sweet potato too, that's about the space the luffa needs compared to sweet potato in my garden & temperature needs are similar too, but luffa needs a LOT more sun than sweet potato. Sweet potato is actually viable to grow indoors in small amounts, so good test plant if you're thinking of growing luffa)
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@rafadacosta1675 How big are yours? Are they similar to the video ones, or smaller? Mine are MUCH smaller (but I live in a less tropical climate, so shorter growing season)
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@shoemakerleve9 I don't like your chances on grow lights either tbh, I'm trying to get cucumbers to grow with them at the moment & struggling, lettuce etc is super easy, but cucumbers MUCH harder & I think this would be the same as cucumbers in light & fertiliser needs, but over a much larger space. Temperature's really important for this one too, not just light, where I live is frost free, but it still dies off when the weather gets to about 10-15c overnight in Autumn. Sweet potato doesn't like cold either, more tollerant than luffas, but dies off quite a bit here in winter (but not fully, some established leaves stay, just doesn't really grow new ones in the middle of winter) & sweet potato will tollerate a lot of shade (quite viable to grow as an indoor, houseplant without any extra lighting beyond regular houseplant needs), so again I'd try that out as a test plant if wanting to see if you can figure out a way to grow luffas. Sweet potato leaves are edible too btw & you will get those in almost all conditions, but if you're not getting good sized tubers, you need to make changes until you do, if you want to grow luffas in the same space/conditions (no/next to no tubers if grown as a houseplant)
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@karakaaa3371 not sure it's cheap to grow you own, the space they need is pretty extreme, that's a LOT of alternative produce loss to grow them! I'd easily lose at least $200 worth of sweet potato if I swapped the space over & grew enough luffas to throw out so frequently
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@rafadacosta1675 maybe, I always thought it was the shorter growing season for mine, but I guess seeds makes sense too, either instead of, or as well as the above
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@Me-fz5vq lol by all means give it a try, but sadly this is one plant you're not going to get success with there. I really struggle to get them grown in the available season in Sydney Australia! Way too late in the season to be planting now, maybe try next year & plant in a greenhouse or sunny window/artificial lights in January or February. I plant mine indoors in July or August & as long as I fertilise well & the weather co-operates, I can have at least a few mature enough for harvest before it turns cold in around May. Try something like large pumpkins this year to test your growing set up, cause they mature much faster, but have similar needs. I'm really curious where you heard the UK is meant to be good for them though, I've never heard that, quite the opposite! They're effectively a tropical only plant, due to how long they take to mature on the vine
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@Me-fz5vq well you can try, but in my experience, you've got Buckleys! Maybe for the small, edible fruits, but I really do struggle to get any to maturity before the weather cools & the plant dies & they stop growing - and I'm not even in an area with frost, they just stop growing when night time temps get down to about 15c in my experience, or it might be daylenght related, not sure, but I know I find them a hard one - and I grow sugarcane, sweet potato, coffee & tropical carnivorous plants with ease! If you do try them, fertilise the first 2 luffas, then pluck off the rest of the female flowers, so that the plant devotes all it's energy into just the 2, so as to mature them as fast as possible. If you have 3 months or less of growing time left when the fruit sets, as soon as you're sure one of the 2 is fertilised & growing well, pluck off the smaller & try to get just one to mature. I found this by accident, with a vine with about 5 or 6 fruits on it & none matured, while the one that only had 1 fruit set almost made it, so next year I plucked off all additional flowers before the plant could waste energy on them & got 1-2 fruits to mature/near mature on each vine. Just don't dedicate space to this in the place of other plants you want more. If you want to grow something fun & interesting to experiment with, linen/linseed/flax is a good one that will love your climate there
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wow, I'm impressed! I struggle to grow to maturity in the available growing season in Sydney. I wouldn't have thought it would be possible in Canada, well done managing it!!!! & yeh, is a great feeling isn't it :)
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@hbp_ define "slowly". If we're talking 100 years or so, not really an issue compared to plastics that are thousands to millions of years for the microplastics to become not, but if you're saying they basically create a product similar to micro-plastics, then that is a problem
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@grendel_nz you know not everyone has a dishwasher right? I know I don't
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seeds don't last long, be sure to plant them early in spring, if you miss a year, none of your seeds will germinate - in my experience anyway
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@ryleesblooms luffa seeds?
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it lasts a fraction of the time anything from China does! Sorry, but he's lying
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presumably you'll need to buy from the US, Canada's too cold for commercial operations growing them
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@bruhmoment1208 sponges aren't sustainable! They're being depleted at an alarming rate!
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@JackieWelles how is it "nonsense" for them to have thought that? You're not inside their head, you don't know what they're thinking. Lots of people think luffas are a sort of sea sponge too, not what they are, but doesn't change that people think this, same as the OP thinking they were an African thing
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@bruhmoment1208 yeh, luffas are fast, I know, cause I grow them & know how long the waste bits take to break down in my compost, but how about the cellulose that was the original alternative to them?
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@bruhmoment1208 yes, I mean the cellulose product discussed in the video & am questioning how long a "long time" is, as per Olli Vanhoja's comment
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DUDE, not all u sounds are short! But don't get BLUE or BRUISED, that wouldn't SUIT you, you'd turn into a PRUDISH PRUNE or some other FRUGAL FRUIT JUICE. Don't SUE me for speaking the TRUTH And yes, if you didn't already realise, every capitalised word in that has the same pronunciation as luffa - at least in the English language
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