This year my farm is beginning an adaptation project for maxima squash. We’ve been growing individual varieties of winter squash for the last eight seasons here in Corbett, OR. While we generally have decent harvests, there are some seasons where our squash has struggled, or even totally failed to yield any harvests. We suspect one of the main issues is the heavy symphylan populations that our farm deals with. Symphylans are a soil-dwelling arthropod that can cause severe crop damage in our region, as they eat the tender growth tips of many germinating plant roots. There are also very few known solutions for symphylan infestations, and larger commercial growers have been known to abandon infested fields. Our hope is that the landrace adaptation methods can help to develop our own genetically diverse variety that can coexist with the symphylans, and thrive in our specific context.
Beyond the main goal of developing symphylan resistance, we’d like to prioritize flavor, yield, visual appeal, moderate sized fruits, and overall performance in our cool and damp conditions. Through direct seeding, providing no supplemental fertility, and minimal weeding and watering, we are also selecting for traits that grow well under the simplest and least labor-intensive methods. Our hope is that over time we can share our seeds and contribute to a community supply of food crop seeds adapted to the Portland, OR region.
The plan is to direct seed 250 seeds in spring (around 5/15). We’ve selected seed from varieties that we like, varieties popular among our local farmer community and the greater Pacific Northwest, several awesome grex and landrace populations, and the mix provided by Going to Seed. We’ve included a range of colors, sizes, shapes, and types.
maxima grex - Going to Seed
2016 maxima Landrace - Joseph Lofthouse
2023 maxima Landrace, selected from Lofthouse - Kay Everts
Nanticoke - Experimental Farm Network
Pueblo Highlands Landrace - Experimental Farm Network
Desert Spirit Mix - Wild Mountain Seeds
To the Max maxima mix - Giving Ground Seeds
Maxima Mash Up - Wild Dreams Farm
Sweetie Winter mix - Saltwater Seeds
Butter Sweet - Peace Seedlings
Sweet Meat - Oregon Homestead - Adaptive Seeds
Lower Salmon River - Adaptive Seeds
Black Forest Kabocha - Uprising Seeds
Red Kuri - Territorial Seeds
Blue Kuri - Adaptive Seeds
Marine Grey Kabocha - Uprising Seeds
Sundream - Siskiyou Seeds
Gold Nugget - Territorial Seeds
Lakota - Great Lakes Staple Seeds
Burgess Buttercup - Urban Farmer
Kindred Orange Buttercup - Great Lakes Staple Seeds
Golden Hubbard - Urban Farmer Seeds
Uncle Dave’s Dakota Dessert - Siskiyou Seeds
I’m excited to share several updates about our adaptation maxima project. We ended up planting our squash in a milpa-style field (in part thanks to Going to Seed’s online milpa course). We used the above listed seeds, all mixed up together, with no supplemental fertility in the field. We direct sowed seeds every 2 ft, in between sweet corn plants and alongside several other crops like beans, amaranth, sunflowers, tithonia, and some others. We had a very cool and damp spring, with warmer soil temperatures not arriving until mid-June.
Here’s are a few photos of the milpa field on June 29 with squash emerging. We applied a light mulch layer in the pathways to keep the weeds down. In areas where the maxima failed to germinate, we actually went back and planted a few moschata seeds because we like those too. With the cool weather, the plants felt a little behind schedule, but the young plants looked good. It is truly a lot of saved time and energy direct sowing compared to our normal greenhouse propagation and transplanting. It also seems the direct sown plants are happier and more well-adjusted to the native context.
Here are a few photos from July 8, finally getting some hot weather and temps in the 90s. We’ve done a little weeding around the squash plants. The maxima plants are finally taking off, the leaves are getting big and some plants are sending out their first tendrils! We can already notice diverse traits in individual plants.
These next photos are from July 20. We are happy with how healthy and vigorous the plants are, despite still needing a good amount of time to reach maturity. The plants are getting big, with long branching runner, plenty of blossoms, and the first fruits starting to form!
We are pretty thrilled with how well the maxima crop has done. We are fortunate to have fertile soil, a decent climate, and some seemingly strong and diverse starting genetics. Anecdotally, it seems that the squash has benefited from being planted in our milpa-style section with corn, beans, and other friends.
Here are some photos of the diversity from over two weeks ago. Now the squash foliage has starting drying and we’ll harvest pretty soon! We are looking forward to comparing traits of the mature squash, and we’re planning a comprehensive taste-test after the squash has plenty of time to cure.
