There are some points you should keep in mind, and remember when trying new cleaning processes on gourds:

1) Always beware of mold, not only at cleaning time, but at planting time there are molds in the ground, it helps to dampen the ground before tilling and digging, to help keep the mold spores in the ground from becoming airborne, (especially in the Midwest where Histplasmacapsulatum is prevalent, it yields a disease called Histoplasmosis with flu like symptoms), and mold spores are prevalent on drying gourds as well. All molds should be treated with care and caution.

2) NOT ALL GOURDS are suitable for green cleaning, oven drying, etc. Bottle gourds, and gourds shaped like bottle gourds seem to be the most stable gourds in these processes. Also all the large gourds we tried, failed. The largest gourd we were successful with was Hyakunari’s in the 3 pound range, but every gourd we tried in the 10+ pound range shriveled and/or cracked. We had nothing in between these sizes to experiment on, so where the line should be drawn we cannot pinpoint at this time. We recommend for gourds in excess of 10 pounds to be cleaned by the rotting process, as this seems to work with Zulu gourds as well as a variety of larger gourds, however we have no data either from our own efforts, or even from the Japanese Society on rotting long gourds like snake gourds etc. There is a convenience factor due to their size in finding a tub and making one submerge for a lengthy period of time.

3) long handled, or long thin shelled gourds like snake gourds do not fare well with green cleaning. They are most likely to shrivel and crack.