Squash Talk

[Joseph Lofthouse]

This year, I took my anti-recordkeeping stance to new extremes, even for me. So I don't really know what squash I planted, or where. I suppose that I will recognize most of them when I see them. It would help with isolation if I at least wrote down what species/variety I planted in which field. Oh well.

I have been growing a green/orange very pretty buttercup as one of my main market crops. I wasn't able to find seed for it this spring, so I planted seed from an off-type descendant of it, that has what I've been calling "Hopi White/Gray" as a pollen donor. Here's hoping that I like the family. I sure devoted a lot of field space to it.

I didn't plant the fig-leaved moschata this year. The season got away from me, and it's too late now.

I planted 3 varieties of pepo winter squash this year. Many people ask for them at the farmer's market, and I haven't been growing them, because I think that they are insipid. I finally caved in to peer-pressure. I bought seeds. I was disappointed in germination and vigor. I planted them all together, so I'm not intending to save seeds.

Maybe instead of whining about how horrid pepo winter squash are, I should develop my own variety... Look at me, being all shy about messing with the phenotype of a variety. LOL. I'm laying here wondering about the possibilities? What if I had spent the past 8 growing seasons selecting for great tasting pepo winter squash -- ike I have been doing with the maximas and moschatas? Oh my! Perhaps I dropped the ball on this one.

I'm growing C. ficifolia which I planted as transplants, so it's the furthest along. I also planted about ten C moschata as transplants, because a lady asked me to grow a dozen for her, and I grew a flat, just in case there were issues. I kept some of the extras for myself.

I planted Tetsukabuto, a maxima/moschata male sterile hybrid with most plantings. Hoping that pepo, maxima, moschata, and mospermia will act as pollen donors to it, so I can build up my stash of inter-species hybrids. A wonderful collaborator sent me a jar of second generation seeds from Tetsukabuto. I planted those.

I saved seed from some of the mospermia as fruit-to-packet, and planted hills of them. Many hills had zero percent germination. Ooops. I already knew that germination would be bad. I should have planted LOTS more seeds than normal.

I'm so curious to find out what I planted!!!!

Most of my squash plantings look about like this right now.

[philagardener]

Sort of like a squash chorus line!

[jocelyn]

I'm playing with Hopis right now. I had all hopi green fruited, except one plant which kept making only male flowers till early October. I used it as male parent, assuming it would be green fruited, then it finally made a female bloom and started a fruit, an orange fruit. Frost got it, so I only have seed from it as the Poppa. The thing I like about it though is that the male bloom has good pollen the second day, the anther doesn't go the brown mush right after the first night.
I used two blooms that opened yesterday on a Hopi green, the only female bloom I have right now.

Hope it takes, grin.

Is there a chance I am selecting for short day plants?

[jocelyn]

The day old flowers I used have not set fruits, oh well.
Fun to find that out though. There is one orange fruited Hopi this year, only a week or so along, but very orange. The rest are pale green, so will ripen to green fruits with silver stripes.

Glad to get the orange fruits back, must give some seeds back to the lad who gave me some. His wife said they were originally orange, green and blue but she has only the green and blue ones now.
Hope it sets lots of seeds.

[jocelyn]

Whoo Hoo, fruits forming for you too

Such fun to try and guess what they will look like later.

[jondear]

For maximas, I've planted the usual suspects from offspring of sweet mama, that have grown alongside various other kabocha type squash, as well as actual Sweet Mama and Winter sweet. The bees are doing their thing, and I suspect the blue skin from Winter sweet will make it's presents known next year.

For something different, I planted a small patch of zepplin delicata, unfortunately, my uncle put zucchini right next to them 😑 As a side note, cucumber beetles are tearing up his zukes, but the Zeppelins aren't being bothered at all. In fact fruit set so far looks promising.

[steev]

Well; neener, neener, neener to him; clearly you made a better choice.

[reed]

Here are some of my Mospermia squash, so far so good on tolerating the stink bugs that have already killed most other squash. Maybe though they just haven't found this patch yet. Plants with lots of yellow in the leaves died early on, not related to the bugs as they had not arrived yet. Some kind of beetle has chewed on the leaves a little but nothing serious. The stink bugs come in droves and suck the life out of a plant almost overnight. I have 8 to 10 plants remaining out of 25 seeds planted. 

[reed]

My Mospermia look real good and no problems with the stink bugs. They have been blooming good for sometime but I haven't seen any little fruits so yesterday I inspected them real good and found all the flowers are male. I even opened up some faded ones, same thing all male. I'm gonna leave the vines though, still a good amount of grow time left maybe a female will show up.

The only other surviving squash I have is some late planted patty pan which I think are Pepo. In any event if nothing else I'll try using the Mospermia pollen on some of those flowers. 

[RpR]

I do not normally speak much of squash as they do OK usually nothing really worth chatting about.
Well this year I actually planted them in both my north and south garden,same type of buttercup related hybrid.

Down south they are doing OK, about normal, after I hacked off the Squash Vine Borer infested section and cut them out of hiding and stabbed them all to death.
Beyond homing in on some volunteer potato plants a dozen feet away, nothing really beyond normal, except I moved the one vine five feet West of the potato plant it hunted down, NOW, it has made a ninety degree turn and heading back towards it.
That is not normal.

Up north, the same specie is remaining comparatively compact, though in the past two weeks I had to sever some vines that wanted to run down the Bridal Veil and over the neighbors fence but it looks amazing healthy in the area where the four plants were put it has leaves on three foot tall vertical stems so thick it looks like a jungle.
I wonder if the mustard plants there, that also went wild, it is flowering with stems higher than my head and I am six feet tall, acted as a barrier that kept the squash from doing as it normally does, climb over the berm, where the mustard is this year, and try to head out over the lawn.
I have had squash, pumpkins with large leaves but usually the stems were horizontal, not vertical.
As the squash, mustard area is now a jungle, I suppose I should wade in there and see what is what, there are a few cleome and there were some tall spinach plants in there also.
As I blasted the Chickweed that was just outside the area with Crossbow weed killer that actually seems to have snuffed it, at least for this year, I have generally just observed from outside this mass of vegetation.
I did remove most of the dill that was there so perhaps a bit of a search and destroy weed sweep should be done.

[RpR]

Squash are doing very well, after slicing and dicing a few squash maggot, they are really very healthy.
A cucumber that I planted near the squash down south, and thought was belly-up, showed up and is suddenly giving me three cukes a week and they get big quickly.

[Joseph Lofthouse]

Some of the mospermia look like long-necked butternuts. Some look like cushaws... A thick 5 sided peduncle is diagnostic for mospermia. A round peduncle is diagnostic for mixta.... Ignoring ongoing segregation. A "butternut" with pale stringing flesh may be mospermia. Leaf shape of mospermia tends to be mid way between mixta and moschata...

[RpR]

My squash vines are starting to show signs of age.
Is it better to let them die off and let the squash lie or pick the squash out and let late comers maybe ripen?
Last year, my buttercup squash in the basement did not make it to spring before getting unusable.
Do buttercup type ripen off of the vine?

[philagardener]

When my vines start to die back, I generally harvest to prevent insect/rodent/mold issues. If the fruit isn't mature enough, that does compromise eating/keeping ability.

[reed]

Is this squash ready to harvest? It is one of Joseph Lofthouse's Mospermia. There ware not a lot of them and this is the biggest. There are also a couple much smaller yellow ones that are much more round. I'm pretty sure the yellow ones are not ready cause the earlier ones on that vine rotted and the ones left were later. I'm gonna leave them until frost but if this one is ready I thought I would go ahead and bring it in.