I started my pepo project this year with 11 varieties of cocozelle and kousa squashes, which have the flavors I prefer (nutty, more complex flavors than most of the zucchini grown here in the U.S.). I’d like to develop a landrace that will be more resistant to the borers and other pests that I’ve always struggled with. Hopefully there’s enough genetic variation among these 11 varieties to do that - if not, I’ll add in some varieties I like less next year. As per Joseph’s instructions, I planted 3 seeds in each hole, and they’re coming up in various combinations of ones, twos, and threes. I’ll have to get rid of two of these, but right now I’m letting them all live.
Very nice. I’ll be interested to see how this goes.
I wasn’t as conservative on my Landrace project. I interplanted all shapes and colors, Zucchinis crooknecks scallops and those round ones.
There’s a Mexican squash called tatume that’s supposed to be resistant to heat and vine borers. I’m undecided if I’m gonna include that in my project yet. Is using that considered cheating? I’ll probably use it anyway.
I wouldn’t consider it cheating to include in the mix. I understand that some are reluctant to include single-gene resistance to particular pests, but I run With the theory that genetics is usually more complicated than less, especially for anything old and obscure. Personally, it isn’t my favorite flavor-wise, but that’s a personal problem.
I’ve only got two varieties going this year (romanesco and Homs Kousa), but the plants are going to intertwine. I’d be glad to add a few seeds from the offspring to your mix.
Thank you for introducing me to Tatume or Calabacita. I read the Texas A&M university newsletter on it and it definitely sounds interesting to me in Squash Vine Borer central.
I grew tatume last year. I don’t know if it’s resistant to vine borers or not, since I don’t think we have them, but we do have tons of squash bugs, and they didn’t seem any more susceptible than any of the rest of my cucurbits. It was delicious as summer squash and meh as winter squash, and had a shelf life of only three months (which is common for pepos). It had a very vigorous vine, flowered a bit on the late side, and had enormous thorns.
For the most part, I was pretty meh about it, because I felt my spaghetti zucchinis were better, but that summer squash flavor! It was way better than my spaghetti zucchinis. I saved seeds from it and am including them in my landrace, because I want to keep that flavor available. I can gradually select out the meh winter squash taste and late flowering and meh shelf life and larger than usual thorns.
Are those two-toned summer squashes the same flavor all the way through, or does the flavor change when the rind color changes? I’ve been curious about that for awhile.
The Zephyr squashes have a consistent flavor all the way through. It’s been some years since I had one, but I recall the flavor being a sweeter, more delicate yellow squash.
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Have you started getting your Homs Kousa off? We’re really liking ours. I’m tempted to do an intentional cross with my tasty but low producing Romanesco.
We like ours better in the “marrow” stage. I’ve also found the plant I need to crossbreed: there’s a Romanesco by itself that is quite vigorous but has exclusively female flowers.
