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Post by mskrieger on Sept 25, 2019 17:24:25 GMT -5
Your crop sounds lovely, jocelyn. A neighbor's daughter plowed through my front yard early last Sunday morning, destroying the fence and some of the squash, but a lot of them survived, including both giant Long of Naples. And I'm starting to think maybe the round, prolific squash aren't actually maximoss, because the ones knocked off the vine by the carnage have begun turning moschata orange in storage. Innnterresting, I have no idea what it might be. Need to look back at my seed stash. Have some random seed in there from Seeds of Italy, that could be it. Hope they taste good. |
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Post by jocelyn on Sept 26, 2019 4:14:22 GMT -5
Sorry about the squash carnage MsKrieger. It'll be fun to taste your mystery squashes and see if you can guess what they are.
How are the days to maturity on yours? I've been shrinking days here, as first killing frost is unpredictable this far north.
The Hubbard influence and the Hopi Green influence really lengthened days, but brought in lots of disease resistance and a hard
rind to deter the mice. There was a slight bitterness in the Hopi Greens, which I think I might have bred out. Final taste testing won't happen till late Oct and last a month or so. I'll freeze some of the pieces after cooking, as Hubby doesn't like squash. It takes me alone quite a while to eat a big one. Frozen pieces zap OK to warm up later.
I think the squashes liked the stone raised bed we made, all that extra heat and thermal mass to store it for the colder nights.
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Post by mskrieger on Sept 26, 2019 7:42:37 GMT -5
Sorry about the squash carnage MsKrieger. It'll be fun to taste your mystery squashes and see if you can guess what they are. How are the days to maturity on yours? I've been shrinking days here, as first killing frost is unpredictable this far north. The Hubbard influence and the Hopi Green influence really lengthened days, but brought in lots of disease resistance and a hard rind to deter the mice. There was a slight bitterness in the Hopi Greens, which I think I might have bred out. Final taste testing won't happen till late Oct and last a month or so. I'll freeze some of the pieces after cooking, as Hubby doesn't like squash. It takes me alone quite a while to eat a big one. Frozen pieces zap OK to warm up later. I think the squashes liked the stone raised bed we made, all that extra heat and thermal mass to store it for the colder nights. Hi Jocelyn, that stone raised bed sounds like a dandy idea for cold nights! Days to maturity isn't a big focus of mine, as we have a realistic 125 day growing season for cucurbits planted on Memorial Day weekend. This year was a weird one, as June warmed up very late and August cooled down very early, but that's relative to our typical season (you'd probably find our weather this year to be a fine warm summer!) Sadly I can't grow maximas well around here, squash borer and squash bugs are both hard on them. This was my first year growing out a big diversity of moschata--I'm going to try to do the same thing I do for melons, and select for taste and productivity. I'll check in on taste later in October/November. I hope to hear your report then, too! |
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Post by Joseph Lofthouse on Oct 3, 2019 9:28:32 GMT -5
I continue to work on the Maximoss (maxima X moschata) project. I have separated the project into two populations.
The first population has fruits that look more like moschata, and have the classic moschata peduncle.
The second population has fruits that look like my landrace maxima squash, except that I have selected for skinny vines and dense, non-corky peduncles. Trying to get squash vine borer resistance into a squash with classic maxima/buttercup taste.
I see a few plants each year that look like they might be 3 species hybrids ((maxima X moschata) X pepo). Alas, seed set and viability have been very low, and the next generation haven't set fruit. I planted Tetsukabuto F1 in the spaghetti squash patch this summer, hoping that some crossing will occur.
This year, I grew Maximoss and Mospermia (argyrosperma X moschata) side by side. Hoping to encourage a different type of 3 species hybrid ((maxima X moschata) X (argyrosperma X moschata)).
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Post by reed on Oct 3, 2019 17:31:45 GMT -5
Joseph Lofthouse , I think I sent you some Tetsukabuto F1. Were they in what you planted, if so did they make fruits, what did they look like? All of my squash died this year. First planting looked good in late May but never recovered from June rains. I just couldn't keep the ones planted after the rains stopped watered good enough. 100% total failure for my squash this year. correction: I meant F2. I think they were pollinated by butternut. I still have bunch of them to try again next year.
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Post by mskrieger on Oct 17, 2019 10:46:58 GMT -5
Hey william pretty sure the seeds will still be viable from the moschata, as long as the fruit was ripe. I have volunteer squash every year from fruits that get missed and spend our harsh freeze/thaw winter on the open ground. I haven't tasted any of my home grown squash yet--I've become convinced it takes 6 weeks after harvest for moschata and maxima to develop their flavor potential. I did figure out what that super aggressive, productive moschata in my garden was: Seminole. It produced fruits much larger than the last time I grew it (which was in a compromised location with worse soil.) I didn't find the flavor that great the first time but I guess my thinking was that I'd plant a single hill and hope it would share its vigor and productivity with the rest of the moschata in subsequent generations. We'll see how well that pans out. Meanwhile, I have a truckload of Seminole squash to eat, as well as two absolutely enormous Long of Naples and a single Violino Rugosa. Joseph Lofthouse I'm giving some of your maximoss seed to friends who suffer terribly from squash vine borer. I'll have them report back on the success/failure of the growout next year. I know you don't have the bug where you are. You may not need to do too much tinkering--the maximoss I grew last year didn't seem to suffer from borer at all (though my yard is not a hotbed of it.) |
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Post by mskrieger on Dec 2, 2019 17:04:25 GMT -5
I tried the less ripe Long of Naples squash. It weighed in at 39lb, truly a "monster piece of plant genitalia" as a friend referred to it. It had an amazingly thick (3 inches+) layer of flesh. Sadly the chunk I tried in the oven was not ripe enough to bake well; got a lot of watery juice and some stringy flesh with no flavor. However, the rest of it has been keeping well in the cold room, and it cooks up into very pleasant flavored zucchini style dishes (but bright orange color!) The other Long of Naples (equally enormous) has been turning that butternut color in storage and I hope it will have better flavor when baked. Meanwhile, I cooked up one of the large Seminole that had a spot of rot and it was really quite good, good enough that the toddlers were scooping bits of it up with their fingers to eat right out of the shell (let it sit in the oven all night after we turned the heat off, and the edges caramalized a bit.) Made a delicious pie with Carol Deppe 's recipe. I haven't tasted the single Violino Rugosa squash we got. A few spots on it appear to have something like brown resin drips? But no soft spots or rot. Its skin is quite rough but not wrinkled. I'm curious to taste it. |
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Post by flowerbug on Dec 24, 2019 1:08:18 GMT -5
we normally grow Buttercup and Kabocha squash here. the borers and squash bugs sometimes do some damage but do not kill them off completely. i don't do anything to control bugs other than to rotate plant in different areas. this past season only the Kabocha squash grew from seeds, i'm not sure why. we didn't plant a lot of plants and they were also planted late so the crop was not that great or well hardened/cured off. still we enjoyed what we did harvest and i'm looking forwards to trying again next year. i'm not much of a fan of Zucchini but i would give Trombonica's a try if i ever get a hold of some seeds for them. other than that i'm really happy to see anyone doing breeding experiments of any type to get more resistant squash that will take the heat and dry spells and also not get so easily killed off by bugs. i love seeing the bumblebees and other natives in the squash and cucumber plants and also working the beans.  if you want an excellent later summer flower i plant some cosmos (the yellow, orange and reddish blend). i'm always amazed at how many species of bees i see on these flowers right up until the frosts take them down. they set a lot of seeds and they grow easily for us. most importantly the deer, rabbits, etc seem to mostly ignore them other than a few sample bites at times... |
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Post by 12540dumont on Mar 16, 2020 14:54:36 GMT -5
I haven't grown squash in 3 years. The squash bugs have killed everything. So this year, I'm going to play with squash again. You know it's a sad state of affairs when zucchini won't grow. I was sorting seeds and came across some of Joseph's Mo' squash. It was delicious last time I had some. From 23 kinds of squash to 0 is very hard. I want pie!
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Post by reed on Mar 17, 2020 3:03:29 GMT -5
Two years ago I had great squash, freaked me out almost cause in several prior years bugs completely ruined them. Last year they looked great again early on but 21 inches of rain in 21 days of June killed them. I'm pretty much done with squash, they might still grow here sometimes but failure 4 out of 5 times or so isn't worth it.
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Post by flowerbug on Mar 17, 2020 7:00:20 GMT -5
Two years ago I had great squash, freaked me out almost cause in several prior years bugs completely ruined them. Last year they looked great again early on but 21 inches of rain in 21 days of June killed them. I'm pretty much done with squash, they might still grow here sometimes but failure 4 out of 5 times or so isn't worth it. i certainly understand that sentiment. one reason why we don't grow corn (among several others). we have been doing ok with squash here and i think we'd have done ok last year too had i not planted so late. even with all the rains we had. i have some new squash and also a small melon that is supposed to be short enough season to try this season so it will be fun to see how those work out. |
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