Weird Squash Phenotypes

[Joseph Lofthouse]

This is how I have been marking the squash this season: Scratching on the young squash with my pocket knife.



That yellow moschata grew up to be quite handsome. I've never seen that color in a moschata squash before neither young nor mature. There were two fruits like that in the garden. Both attached to the same root.

[khumlee]

In my two hundred mixing (mochata and maxima) squash plants I have few lobed leaf plants this year maybe the latter years too. But I have never take care about this.
Very nice yellow mochata color fruit.

[billw]

Aug 11, 2014 21:42:09 GMT -5 flowerweaver said:

Another person thought when you planted a vegetable it lived forever, not understanding most of what we eat as food goes through an annual cycle and must be replanted.

LOL! I had an experience like that earlier this year. A neighbor saw me prepping the ground and said, "Man it sure is a lot of work for you planting everything and then pulling it out every year. Why don't you just grow like a farmer?"

So, of course, I inquired: "What do you mean by that?"

He said, "You know - just harvest the food and leave all the plants in the ground."

[steev]

Ignorance is bliss.

I remember my Grandad's "End of the garden stew", which he made each Fall, when he cleared the garden, not growing winter veggies. The only consistent ingredient was stew-beef, everything else was what came to hand. Wasn't bad, as I recall, but there certainly was no perennial garden.

[philagardener]

Are you sure it was stew-beef? :>)

[steev]

I don't recall any of the neighbors or their pets going missing.

[Joseph Lofthouse]

I cut into that moschata squash with precocious yellow coloring... I'm baking it and frying it now. I found 6 seeds that looked viable. There were lots of empty seed coats inside.  The seeds were extra large and dark tan. Not like a typical moschata squash seed. Taken together that increases my speculation that it may be an inter-species hybrid. I'm hoping to post photos later on.  Then I went outside to get a paper bag and the slimy seeds squirted out of my grasped fist and fell into the grass. It was after dark and I only found 5 of the seeds so far... Oh well. Now to keep track of them until next growing season. There are two fruits so I may open that one in a few weeks. Also cooking a mixta squash

[steev]

I hope that sixth seed isn't laying for you; be careful, going out in the dark.

[flowerweaver]

Ever since the drought killed the lawn I throw all old/unknown/weird-looking seeds out front and forget about them... until something comes up and surprises me. That missing seed will probably produce your best harvest!

[Carol Deppe]

joseph, new mutations are not particularly uncommon. If you have one section of the plant appearing that is different from the rest of the plant than it might have had a new dominant mutation occur during vegetative reproduction. So a plant producing one kind of leaf or fruit may have a branch that produces something quite different. And of course accidental crosses between species sometimes do happen. Mixta and moschata don't seem to be "real" different species, either. They are just thinking about being different species someday, but have not fully committed, I figure. They often cross. Where I depend upon species barriers to keep my varieties pure, so plant just moschatas or mixtas but not both.

jondear, I've grown Sweet Mama. It is a C. maxima. It is an F1 hybrid heterozygous for bush. Fruit texture is coarser and flavor not as sweet or intense as many others. And fruit is not very dry either. It's a popular squash in markets, mostly because of it's size and attractive color I think. And earliness. And for market, growers often prefer wetter squash, as it's easier and cheaper to sell water than actual dry squash flesh. The wetter squashes always outyield the really dry ones since squash are sold on a wet weight basis. (Keep this in mind when evaluating the yield of dry-flesh varieties intended for homestead use, where actual food production, not water production, is what matters.)

[blackox]

If the lobed squash leaves are genetic, perhaps the trait would come to use in particularly windy areas? The lobes acting somewhat like the lobes in Hurricane plant(Monstera deliciosa)leaves, just not as effectively.

Also, and I'm sure that I'm not speaking for just myself here, it's an honor to have you here on the forum Carol. It's only been a couple of days worth of reading your posts and I've already learned quite a lot about plant genetics, particularly corn.

[jondear]

Hi Carol, the Sweet Mamas I grew this year were F3's. They were grown along side burgess buttercups. Last year I selected ( from my uncles crop) squash that were on very vigorous vines. They were actually among the best squash I've eaten. I haven't eaten any yet this year, as I'm after ripening the seed. I did get some that had less vigorous vines but one looked like a spider with many vines going in several directions, which could be a useful trait. Selected squash from my breeding patch, based heavily on flavor, will be grown out next year. It's a work in progress. Suggestions for next years additions [to the kabocha landrace I'm working on] are welcome.

I have often wondered about some hybrid varieties as the seed you buy looks very much different than the seed you harvest. Sunshine is one example of this. The seed is thin and flat and for the most part white but the seed you harvest is tan and more plump typical of most Maxima's.

[Carol Deppe]

blackox, thanks for the welcome! I actually joined the forum more than a year ago, but had such a crappy computer that reading anything online was torture. And I was consumed with the new book. Now I have a computer that is actually a joy to use, and the book is turned in and in production. So I came up for air and looked around...

jondear, 'Sweet Mama' is the name of a proprietary commercial F1 hybrid. So if you have grown out an F2 and an F3 of that material, those are a breeding project of your own. But they aren't 'Sweet Mama' any more, even if no other genes are introduced, such as from Burgess Buttercup. 'Sweet Mama' is nice and early, vigorous, and high yielding, so it's a good choice to breed from on those grounds. But the flesh isn't as sweet, intensely flavorful, or fine-grained as the best op squash such as Burgess. Burgess Buttercup is unsurpassed for flavor but isn't as early, productive, or vigorous as Sweet Mama hybrid. So if you have allowed crossing between the 'Sweet Mama' breeding material and Burgess, that's a nice choice. You can pick up earliness and vigor from the 'Sweet Mama' and better quality--better flavor, drier flesh, and finer texture from the Burgess. If I were doing it I probably would have just crossed 'Sweet Mama' hybrid to the Burgess, then discarded the semibushes in the next generation and just mass selected from there, that is, keeping seed from the best-quality/flavored fruits from the most productive plants each (open-pollinated) generation thereafter. (I prefer full vines to bushes or half bushes.) You might have got to about the same place a bit less directly.

If I were doing it I would not add additional material unless there is some particular reason. Very few squash are as high quality as Burgess or as vigorous and early and high yielding as Sweet Mama. One reason might be you want more colors than just the green. If so, I'd suggest mixing in some Sunshine F1. (5 lbs and orange-red) It's actually the only hybrid max I know of whose quality is as good as the best op max varieties. And it's as vigorous and productive as Sweet Mama. And it's a comparable size to the other squash you are using.

The more different squash you use, the more likely you are to generate genetic combinations that are inferior in quality and flavor to what you started with. So whether you are after a new pure variety or a landrace, when you are after top culinary quality I think there is often much to be said for using just two or three varieties as parents. It's easier to get/keep uniformity for top culinary quality that way.

If you'd like to walk on the wild side, though, I would suggest mixing in some '(Dutch/Flat) White Boer'. It's the only high quality white maxima squash I know of. It's delicious but decidedly moist. It runs up to about 30 lbs and has a very flattened Kabocha shape with very thick flesh and a ridiculously tiny seed cavity. But it is moist, and does not store well. It would be nice to have lots more good culinary quality white squash. It would be nice to have a high quality culinary white variety that was drier and stored better. And/or smaller. The flavor of the White Boer is also quite different from most other maximas. Buttercup, Sweet Mama, Sunshine, Sweet Meat, and many others all belong to one basic flavor class, though they differ in quality, sweetness, intensity of flavor, etc. But White Boer is an entirely different flavor class, and it's the only squash I know of with that distinct flavor. It would be nice to have other squash with that different flavor.

It really depends upon what you are after. Do you want every size or a particular (approximate) size? Do you want a uniform color or a mix of colors? Do you want just vines, or just bushes or a mix? (Homozygous bush varieties seem never to develop the full sweetness of vine or half-bush types, however. Which is why I go for vines.)

One characteristic I care a lot about is keeping ability. If a maxima squash can't store till spring, I it doesn't make the cut.

I also care a lot about thickness of flesh. A squash with thicker flesh can have 3 times as much food or more as one with more typical flesh thickness, but takes no more space to grow or store. When I mass select I save seed only from the fruits with the thicker flesh.

You can evaluate the flavor and quality of the fruit when it is raw, incidentally, and learn to correlate that with what it will taste like cooked. That way you can check the flavor and quality of every fruit before you bother saving its seed.

Seed you grow out from an F1 hybrid is different from the F2 seed you keep out of the hybrid for the following reason. Let's suppose the F1 hybrid has as parents secret variety A and secret variety B, both themselves purebreeding varieties, and is made in the direction of using variety A as the female parent and B as the male/pollen parent. The seed of that cross, the F1 seed, is made on variety A, and generally looks like seed of variety A. But the F1 hybrid between A and B is genetically different from A, so those F1 plants produce whatever seed type is indicated by their own genes.

[steev]

So glad to have such high-powered input; love "The Resilient Gardener"; your presence will doubtless draw many more to this forum, to the benefit of us all.

[flowerweaver]

Carol Deppe I second that. I read "The Resilient Gardener" earlier this year. Within four months my gardens went through a late freeze, drought, flood, baseball-sized hail, and a tornado. The message of resiliency has never been more pertinent!