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Post by 12540dumont on Sept 28, 2013 12:57:55 GMT -5
I did get some mixtas this year as well. I got one or two fruits from almost all the Hopi Squash that Keen sent me. The squash bugs were fierce this year. The White Hopi didn't have a chance.
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Post by Joseph Lofthouse on Jul 28, 2014 23:57:35 GMT -5
Not a Curtis Showell Mixta, but... I hand pollinated this because it was the first fruit of the season. Looks so far like it took. There are other fruits flowering now... Should be plenty of time to mature a fruit before frost. There sure are gobs of squash bees in the garden!
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Post by Joseph Lofthouse on Aug 9, 2014 0:34:07 GMT -5
Finally.... This is the 5th year working on Mixta squash. Last year I finally harvested a fruit. This year I am well on my way to harvesting lots of fruits. For scale that is 3" diameter irrigation pipe. (I still haven't found the seeds from last year's Mixta squash. Lost, I suppose, in a safe place.)
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Post by steev on Aug 10, 2014 21:44:46 GMT -5
They're in the last place you'll look for them.
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Post by Joseph Lofthouse on Aug 12, 2014 1:10:36 GMT -5
LOL steev. I have so many mixta squash maturing so quickly that I decided I could sacrifice a few to the frying pan. They were bland and boring: About like a typical zucchini or an average pepo summer squash. This year I am being totally non-selective with them. This can be a survival-of-the-fittest year. I think that the variety that is doing really well for me came out of an intentional landrace growing at high elevation in New Mexico.
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Post by Joseph Lofthouse on Oct 12, 2014 2:18:19 GMT -5
Here are the mixta squash fruits that I ended up saving for seed. It looks like about 9 different types to me. The plants with highly jagged leaf margins were the slowest to produce fruit. The plant that produced the white fruits was the most productive. The green/white fruits on the far left were the earliest. The light green and white fruits on the front were almost too long season.
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Post by flowerweaver on Oct 12, 2014 3:51:50 GMT -5
They look great! Congrats on your progress. Way down here, my white mixta are also most prolific, but they come in the earliest, too, about the same time as my moschatas. I harvested them on September 5th. A month later on October 5th I harvested a couple that look like the green and white you have on the left. I believe mine have both a Mexican and New Mexican landrace in them. Of course, anything that was harvested this year survived the tornado and hail, so it was selected for me!
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Post by Joseph Lofthouse on Nov 23, 2014 18:36:51 GMT -5
Oops. I cut open the three smallest green/white squash today. They were crisp and bitter!!! Their skin reminded me of lagenaria rind. They were very late, being produced after frost had damaged the patch. They were harvested weeks after the others. Hopefully the bitterness was environmental due to frost damage to the vine. Hopefully if the bitterness is genetic then the plant was shedding pollen too late to affect the other squash. The other very late squash was that oval green/white one to the left of the three smallish ones, and that dark green one all the way to the right. Perhaps I'll get to test my theories about selecting against bitterness in squash. The dark green necked/pear squash was grown in a different field. Then I cooked and ate one like the white/green necked squash. Taste was meh, which is a vast improvement over spitting. The skin was delicate: easily eaten. About 90% of the seeds appeared to be empty seed coats. Edit: My family says it tastes like eggplant.
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Post by ferdzy on Nov 23, 2014 22:31:26 GMT -5
Joseph, I grew mixtas for the first time this year. Any under a certain size were bitter. So far, the others have tasted okay but texture is a bit stringy. Think I'll stick with moschatas next year.
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Post by Joseph Lofthouse on Nov 23, 2014 22:59:22 GMT -5
Joseph, I grew mixtas for the first time this year. Any under a certain size were bitter. Immature you think? Or just small fruited?
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Post by ferdzy on Nov 24, 2014 10:18:06 GMT -5
Hard to say, exactly. We certainly had a very cool, rainy summer for the second half, i.e. from about when they were planted (early June). However, the large ones seem to be ripe so presumably they had time etc enough to ripen. On the other hand, if the little ones were the ones that formed late, they could be underripe.
Tl;dr - I dunno. Sorry.
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Post by Joseph Lofthouse on Jan 11, 2015 16:04:15 GMT -5
I cut open most of the mixta squash today, and tasted them, and saved seeds. I've labeled the photo so I can describe them easier. "Hopi" were the earliest for me, and they contained LOTS OF BIG SEEDS. I hear rumors that mixtas are traditionally grown for the seeds. I can understand why if this is an example. The "white" stored very poorly. "Seth's", "Green Striped", and "Pale Green Pumpkin" contained mostly immature seeds. I intend to plant them in a separate field in case the "Bitter" squash were flowering at the same time. The flesh of most of them was some shade of yellow except for "Green Striped" which was white. The yellow fleshed squash were ok to eat, but in regards to the white fleshed, "Gag me already". "Dark Green", and "Lobbed Mottled" contained lots of big seeds. Not quite as many as Hopi.
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Post by Joseph Lofthouse on Jan 11, 2015 22:42:52 GMT -5
I thought I was done writing about mixta squash until next growing season... I was still cooking squash when I made the previous post. One of the squash actually tasted good! It was the dark green one labeled "Seth's" on the previous photo. It had ripened nicely in storage:
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Post by ferdzy on Jan 12, 2015 13:07:23 GMT -5
Ah? We weren't too impressed with our mixtas, but there are three still in the laundry room. Maybe we should try one again.
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Post by Joseph Lofthouse on Sept 15, 2015 10:11:33 GMT -5
I took the first mature mixta squash to the farmer's market about ten days ago:
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