Squash Talk

[jondear]

As far as white vs. brown seeds, for me, this year, a third of the plants were from white seeds being planted. However, the majority of last year's crops were brown seeded. Every squash harvested this year was brown seeded, of various shapes. So I'm guessing it's a dominant trait.

On a side note, this year's squash was the best tasting squash I've ever grown. Very sweet and squashy. The texture was very nice and the flesh is dry, like I like it. I'm not sure if it's because I'm getting my soil more balanced, or selection of genetics from my landrace as it grew in a marginal field that was lacking a lot of things - mostly calcium, magnesium, and potassium.

[oxbowfarm]

My personal experience growing squash has been that it has become more difficult the longer I've grown them. The first two years we were farming here I was able to grow large amounts of maxima, and we experimented with a "maxima landrace" primarily based around various landracy maximas from Native Seeds/SEARCH like Rio Lucio and Navajo Hubbard and Lakota squash. We were able to grow some really pretty and HUGE maximas back then.



The flavor of those oxbow landrace maximas was nothing special, and they were often watery. I loved Carol Deppe's books, and she is a fantastic promoter of her preferred varieties, so I tried growing all of her recommended maximas, Sunshine F1, Sweetmeat OR Hmstd, Katy's Sweet, Uncle David's, etc. Pretty much they all did very poorly , and at this point I can't usually get a maxima to even survive the season, let alone produce edible fruit. I attribute this to a massive increase in my cucurbit insect pests over time. Particularly striped cucumber beetle. I get cucumber beetle attack from the moment the cotyledons emerge till frost. Moschata and pepo that survive the seedling stage usually grow beyond the ability of the beetles to damage them, but maximas are continuously attacked until they're dead. I'm pretty sure I've read that maximas are preferred hosts to cuke beetle, to the point that some organic producers are recommended to use Blue Hubbard as a trap crop for attracting cuke beetle away from pepo plantings etc.

We also have squash bugs and vine borer, and the borer seem to be what finish off the maximas that do survive the seedling stage.

So I've pretty much given up on maxima, and focus entirely on pepo squash of various types and butternuts solely for my moschata. I do want to experiment with argyrosperma for a pepita crop, but not for market.

Many of my colleagues at market do successfully bring maximas to market, but I believe they have more land to rotate onto, and often they are spraying with stuff like Entrust and Spinosad, neither of which I am willing to use.

[steev]

Lovely, and the squash isn't bad, either.

[mskrieger]

Dec 20, 2017 9:09:19 GMT -5 oxbowfarm said:

My personal experience growing squash has been that it has become more difficult the longer I've grown them.  

.

I have found growing maxima to be a losing proposition as well, for indeterminate reasons. Thought it was borers, but now I'm not convinced.

So I joined The Pumpkin Project. You might be interested in it too. It started because a new disease is afflicting cucurbits in the Northeast and Midwest of North America. Looks like a kind of bacterial wilt. Researchers at NC State were investigating it, but realized the research in native cucurbit ecology (that is, North American cucurbit ecology) was sorely lacking and without that they wouldn't be able to give good recommendations for preventing the disease without pesticide kill-it-all action, which they believe is a losing strategy longterm.

So the NC State folk have asked people all over the world but especially in eastern North America to document the insects, fungi, diseases, etc. living on and around their squash/melons/cucumbers.

You can get the whole story from Lori Shapiro 
[e-mail]
who is heading up the project. 

[reed]

I planted some squash over in the survivor garden this year. It's the spot where stuff is planted and mostly ignored to see if anything makes it on it's own. This particular plant(s) did.



I'm not sure what it is. I planted Tetsukabuto, some pepos and I think some Kabocha. Lack of watering, weeds, disease and bugs took them all except this one(s). They are huge vines, easily 40 feet if left to run unhindered. 

There are lots of large fruits, I picked one of the smaller ones to see what it looked like inside. It didn't taste very good but I don't think it is ripe. 



It only had a few seeds, this is the total of ones that look mature, it had about the same number of small empty shells. Also bumblebees apparently hold meetings in  it's flowers. 



Anyone know? Is it Tetsukabuto or Kabocha or something else?


 

[Joseph Lofthouse]

Sept 5, 2018 8:20:56 GMT -5 reed said:

Anyone know? Is it Tetsukabuto or Kabocha or something else?

Looks like Tetsukabuto to me.

[keen101 (Biolumo / Andrew B.)]

I planted some hopi white really late, not sure when. Not really expecting any to make it, but one has a fruit, so we will see.

I wonder if moth balls would discourage vine borers. I've been thinking of a non pesticide way to discourage the apple moth worms and thought of hanging moth balls.

[reed]

There were few seeds in that Tetsukabuto to begin with and now that they dried down more about 1/2 kinda curled up like they are probably empty. I imagine the bigger more mature fruits still on vine will have more good seeds as they have had longer to mature and more of the other various vines in the patch were still alive and blooming when they first formed. Based on the health, size and production of this plant, growing in such neglected conditions,  I really want to get some more seeds.

The only other fruits I got from the survivor patch were a few small acorns. 

[jocelyn]

I have a hodgepodge of maximas all open pollinated. They get set out in good soil, at male flowering stage, then ignored totally till harvest.
Here, that works. Birds eat the borers, so they aren't many.

[fliver]

I have never been able to grow squash because of squash borers. Last winter I looked up information on it's life cycle and found that after a certain time in late spring/early summer, they no longer lay eggs. So I planted my maximas after that date. Even with the very hot, very dry summer we had my squash vines are huge and show no sign of borer damage. This is the first year I have followed this practice,so it might be a fluke. I plan to do the same next year, so we shall see.

[philagardener]

I've had some luck with later plantings too. That said, I also have more trouble with powdery mildew in late July into August, so if it isn't one thing it's another; we have really humid summers in the Philadelphia area, so if you are drier then that would not be an issue.

[reed]

I'v had better luck overall by planting squash later. I'v never had too much trouble with borers but disease and swarms of some kind of stink bug looking critters are real bad. Don't really know why later planting do better but I'm convinced they do.

The Tetsukabuto this year and last year some kind of nice orange/green squash from one of Joseph's mixes did very well even though not planted late, they have tolerated everything. The Tetsukabuto is still setting fruits and I understand it is supposed to be male sterile. That means it is't the plant still alive in the jumble of vines and weeds. I don't remember for sure what all I planted but am wondering if the ones from Joseph's might be in there, although I don't see any fruits with orange coloring.

[walt]

Sept 8, 2018 9:37:06 GMT -5 fliver said:

I have never been able to grow squash because of squash borers. Last winter I looked up information on it's life cycle and found that after a certain time in late spring/early summer, they no longer lay eggs. So I planted my maximas after that date. Even with the very hot, very dry summer we had my squash vines are huge and show no sign of borer damage. This is the first year I have followed this practice,so it might be a fluke. I plan to do the same next year, so we shall see.

That's good to know.  

[reed]

How do you know for sure when a squash is ready? Acorns are easy cause they turn part orange or yellow and the vines die but the Tetsukabuto vines are still completely green, still growing and still blooming. The one I sacrificed to curiosity was a younger one and tasted not ripe but the bigger older ones look exactly the same as they have for awhile.

Should I just leave them till ready to frost?

[Joseph Lofthouse]

My strategy for harvesting squash is to smash my fingernails against the skin on the fruit. If they sink in any at all, the squash isn't ready to harvest. If I don't leave dents, then I pick. On some varieties/species there are color changes, or glossiness changes. I remember being startled by a study on the sugar levels in Tetsukabuto squash. It attained maximum sweetness something like 3 months after harvest. For best taste, I recommend that maximas and moschatas not be eaten for at least 3 weeks after harvest.