Becomming a Sponge, in Several Steps

First steps, clean the skin off the gourd, shake out the seeds.  This is the OLD loofah, it measured about 10 inches long and had well more than one hundred seeds!  I suspect the other longer gourds will have a lot more seeds which means I'll probably never have to buy loofahs seeds again!  The skin wasn't too hard to remove because it was so brittle.

Here is the gourd after a quick plain water rinse.

 

Here is the gourd after a quick rinse in a light bleach water.  I might should have left it in the bleach water a little longer than the 3-4 minutes I did. This is a practice gourd, so once it's dry I'll know if it needs more time soaking.  I'm hoping the bleach will lighten that dark spot.  Now it's laying on top of my compost bin so it can dry in the sun.  I need to turn it over every 30 minutes or so.

Once this one is done, I have six more to do...