What's Pinching My Stems?

 I usually stay in my flower garden and only rarely dabble in the vegetable patch. But I do so want to be friends with gourds.

But I'm having trouble. I don't get it really - I mean HOW hard can it be to grow a gourd plant??? One of the oldest plants known to mankind!

"The gourd is the only plant that experts believe to have spanned the entire globe."

Seems like a very basic sort of vegetable to grow.

These tiny spinner gourds tempted me over into trying again.

You can see that it all starts out great! Beautiful little squash blossom -

Then curling up after one day -

 And quickly forming a eensy, tiny, adorable gourd!

 This one even got big enough to have stripes.

And then...

It's so sad - I didn't even take any pictures of it. The stem gets what looks like a pinch right in the middle. After that, the gourd baby turns yellow and croaks in an ugly way. Did some research last night, and the only thing I can find (!) that messes up gourds is mildew. Which killed my gourds last year. 

I sprayed the fuzz off them, but I find myself wondering what in the world am I doing trying to raise vegetables...

Send advice all you amazing Vegetable Gardeners!