Wild Pueblo Squash

[keen101 (Biolumo / Andrew B.)]

I figured i'll probably be posting more photos of this variety regularly, so it was probably best to create a thread for it specifically.

Bobbi is the woman i originally obtained seed from. Unfortunately i have lost her old emails, but from what i remember her telling me, her friend was hiking in the Monticello Utah area, close to the historic Newspaper Rock site, when she went off hiking and found a grove of aspen trees and an old somewhat hidden pueblo ruin (and undisturbed by tourists), behind the ruin she found a small stream and a large squash plant growing with several large ripe squash fruits. And so.., she stole one and packed it home.

ancientembrace.blogspot.com/2011/03/hopi-squash-soup.html

bholyoak.blogspot.com/2011/11/hopi-squash.html

This really hasn't been a great year for growing things. And most of my squash plants are still tiny and havn't grown much the whole season. But one Wild Pueblo squash is doing well and has produced a nice large squash, so i'm happy about that. I think this thing is even larger than the hopi black squash i grew a few years ago.

Here is the most recent photos:





Here are older photos taken in 2012 i think:

alanbishop.proboards.com/thread/5177/pumpkins-winter-squash-plant?page=5&scrollTo=73905

alanbishop.proboards.com/thread/6626/squash?page=2&scrollTo=76427

alanbishop.proboards.com/thread/6626/squash?page=2&scrollTo=77787






Wild Pueblo on left. Hopi White on right.




and here are photo's originally from bobbi:

[keen101 (Biolumo / Andrew B.)]

I decided to harvest the two big squash today. One wild pueblo on the right, and one hopi white on the left. They seem mostly mature, so it will give the plants time to try and grow the others or set more flowers or whatever. The wild pueblo has no blemishes on it. The hopi white has what appears to be claw marks on it. I suspect the neighbors fat orange cat decided to sharpen it's claws on the Hopi White. One of the largest Joseph's watermelons in the background.

[keen101 (Biolumo / Andrew B.)]

Update: based on older photos of mine and some new squash fruits developing now i actually think the huge wild pueblo squash i harvested this year is actually a hybrid between wild pueblo and hopi white. Here are three new photos to back up this assumption.



This one is a bright yellow fruit that has the precocious yellow gene and also appears to have a bush-like growth habit to it.



This one has bright yellow/orange but mottled heavily with green mottled pattern.



Similar to the large one this year, this one has some yellow, but it is a much lighter color and slightly muted. Suspected to also be a hybrid.

[keen101 (Biolumo / Andrew B.)]

Here are some photos of the small ones i got this year. As you can see there is still much variability in this variety. The supper orange one again had a very bush-like growth habit about it and was a deeper precocious yellow than the others. The Orange-Green mottled one has cool variability. And a few more pale orange with green stripey tops. Many of the smaller ones feel sort of Hubbard like this year which i don't like. I wonder if there may be some crossing that went on the last time i grew them. There is a high likely hood of crosses with Hopi White, but i didn't grow anything hubbard-ish. I suppose it's always possible that neighbors did (although i didn't see any neighbors growing anything).

[steev]

It's always kind of bitter-sweet when none of the neighbors grow anything (unless they're Big Ag, of course).

[keen101 (Biolumo / Andrew B.)]

A picture of my one and only squash fruit this year. Wild Pueblo 2016.

[keen101 (Biolumo / Andrew B.)]

So, i sent all my wild pueblo squash seeds to joseph a year or two ago because 1. i didn't think i had the room to grow them with crazy schedules coming up, and 2. because he has great success with growing squash, and 3. i don't think Wild Pueblo had very good flavor maybe (although i didn't try the precoucious yellow fruits), but it had a lot of cool qualities like high genetic diversity (maybe was accidentally increased by me not keeping them pure), some had precocious yellow fruits (a rare trait in maxima squash), one hybrid looking one got huge but had interesting ribbing like the Hopi Black moschata squash i grew that one year, and they often had this "two leaf trait" where they would put out two large leaves when sprouting from seed rather than just one like most varieties. I never heard anything back, so i had assumed perhaps they had been lost. It sounds like now they might just be in storage somewhere. So joseph if you ever find them and grow them out that would be awesome, or if you find them and decide to send them back that would also be awesome.

but, under the scenario that they were lost i had remembered that i still had a small sample of some Hopi White seeds in the fridge that were grown next to some Wild Pueblo. I decided to try planting some here at our apartment garden even though it was super late for planting squash. I decided to keep an eye out for any that looked like Wild Pueblo hybrids. I found one and it seems to have made it to enough maturity that i think there are seeds inside. But it now might be even more crossed up, so i will need to try growing out all my Hopi White seeds and select for these traits if possible.

I'm calling this my "Happy Accident" squash as it looks really cool having both the traits of Wild Pueblo, and some intermittent or co-dominant white color from Hopi White. Hopi White had superior plump seeds that were excellent for seed roasting, so this was a cross i had wanted to do originally anyway.

20181012_190202 by Andrew Barney, on Flickr

20181012_190217 by Andrew Barney, on Flickr