My Dad the Upo Whisperer

An upo is a Filipino bottle gourd that grows on vines, becoming as large as a baseball bat. Its outer skin is thick, green, and a bit fuzzy. The flesh is bright white, with many seeds, and has a mild taste when cooked that complements other more intensely-flavored ingredients. This makes it perfect for many Filipino soups and stews, such as bulanglang. Upo can also be served on its own as a vegetable side dish. Upo is known as a “winter melon” despite being a tropical vegetable. Filipinos fail to see any disagreement between “winter” and “tropical” since the temperature in the Philippines never dips below 80 degrees.

Most of my Dad’s neighbors in Brooklyn were familiar with this beast of a gourd, but not because they grew upo themselves. Rather, all those who had the privilege of seeing my dad’s garden were in awe of it, and those who were not so fortunate had heard about it through the upovine. Dad’s garden was the stuff of urban legends.

My dad grew upo in his backyard garden from seeds saved from each previous year’s harvest. This alone is not too amazing; but Dad’s upo vines grew so thick and long they covered the entire backyard—that was mostly concrete. The actual plot of dirt that the vines sprouted from was one foot by eight feet. The vines covered an area that was roughly twenty by fifteen feet. The vines would grow so thickly that they provided complete shade from the sun underneath, and the upo grew so plentifully upon them that you needed to cut three or four of them down if you wanted to sit under the shady vines. Every chance Dad got, he would arrive at the house of a friend or relative carrying a few upo on his shoulder, like he was going to batting practice. Once he came home from an outdoor farmer’s market with a huge smile on his face, because he’d spotted a vendor selling upo—much smaller than his own—for ten dollars apiece. He calculated his current crop to be just shy of a thousand dollars—but was adamant that he would never sell any of it.