Sweet meat oregon homestead squash

[philip]

Did you ever find yourself in the situation where your "nagging wife" (sorry baby) points out things that seem totally insignificant to you?

I am happy out growing the sweet meat squash and i tell her "isn't this great! Look at all the squash!" and she goes "but they're not orange! They're blue! I can't cut that open and put a candle Inside for Halloween. I wan't a real orange Halloween squash!"



So there is one! Small seed cavity, productive, reliable. Produces lots of food.
But the wife wants them to be orange......
So here i go, to all you good folks,
Is there anyone who knows of a good, classic, orange halloween squash that also tastes good?
I am looking for seeds!
My plan is to cross the sweet meat with a orange squash, to try and "turn" the sweet meat into an orange squash whilst keeping its good qualities.
Thanks in advance!

[raymondo]

Not a classic halloween pumpkin but it has almost orange skin (well, pinkish orange) and has great flavour IMHO ... Australian Butter. It's a maxima so will cross readily with OHSM.

[billw]

I would just paint it orange. Simpler than breeding a new squash.

[mskrieger]

'Sweet Meat' is C. maxima. Most classic orange pumpkins are C. pepo. So no crossing there, as far as I know. There is a very lovely, tasty, bright red-orange C. maxima bred by Johnny's Selected Seed called 'Sunshine'. It is a hybrid. As far as I know, the bright orange color in maximas is associated with inferior eating quality...that's why Johnny's Sunshine is so celebrated. (And as far as I know, no one has 'dehybridized' it...though you of course can try.)

[galina]

Buy one. Around halloween time the local supermarkets sell the ghastly orange pepo things for 'tuppence'. Sweet Meat is far too good to waste on halloween.

There is Triple Treat which is orange, tastes good and has edible seeds if I remember right. That's a halloween squash where you can eat the flesh in soups and roast the seeds too.

www.burpee.com/vegetables/pumpkins/pumpkin-triple-treat-prod001157.html

[steev]

Tonight my landlady pimped me yet again about planting Sweet Meat; I've not had any for three years (for various reasons), but it's her all-time favorite. I also greatly favor it, but I think several kabocha-types are equally good and of a more manageable size.

This is tentatively looking like a year of favorable conditions, so I expect to plant it, as well as several other storage squashes of my preference. This could be the first year in the last five that I'll get my entire critter-fenced area back in production.

Water really is life; props to Standing Rock Resistance! Our Great Mother knew what She was doing when She buried all that carbon; it should be left in its grave, lest it rise up, zombie-like, to kill us through global climate-change.

[caledonian]

The most traditional vegetable for Halloween carving is the turnip.

I have noticed some people carving and/or painting white squash instead of the traditional orange.