Desirable traits in rough order of importance:
Edit: My farming partner rightly pointed out that the first criterion has to be reliable fruit production. In both the last two season we have not harvested anything worth eating.
So,
Reliable fruit production.
Excellent flavour both boiled and roasted.
Smooth texture - no fibre.
Excellent keepers - minimum 6 months.
Dark orange flesh.
Bush habit.
No monster fruits.
We started our maxima landrace last season with various Cucurbita maxima cultivars and although we got no fruit worth eating we did manage to collect seed from most and I even managed a cross. The seed we collected came from Anna Swartz, Bylinka, Bylinka x Golden Nugget, Golden Nugget, Jarrahdale and Lakota.
This season we sowed the above along with Australian Butter, Baby Blue, Don’s #2 (from a friend nearby), Oregon Homestead Sweetmeat, Strawberry Crown and Uncle Davids Dakota Dessert. These are all planted together along the eastern edge of the corn patch. I found another bush type, Nelson F1, which I’m growing well away from the others to make sure it has viable pollen before adding it.
I don’t expect much to eat this season as we had to plant very late because frosts lasted so long. In fact, we had to cover the entire corn patch in a thick layer of hay to protect everything from unanticipated frosts. It seems like we may have had our last frost (day before the summer solstice!) but this means we don’t have much of a season left. Only time will tell.
Wow, Ray, frost before solstice, it gets crazier every time! Guess you’ll be selecting for frost resistance this year before anything on your well thought out list.
I think I remember a picture of a couple squash you got last season. It’s nice to see someone else working with gold nugget, it’s so quick but needs so much work to be tasty.
I’m not sure what my blue pumpkin was this year that did so well, but if it’s oregon homestead sweetmeat it should do well for you. Hope you get good seeds and some nice squash either way.
@Greenstorm This season we transplanted but very late because frosts continued for so long. I’m not expecting much this season but we’ll see. I have Golden Nugget in among the rest intending to make as many crosses as I can manage. Once I have a decent amount of F2 seeds I’d be more than happy to send some your way. My plan with the F2 is to cull all non bush types and let the remainder do their thing.
I was so surprised this year, I transplanted my squash late (June) and direct-seeded even later (mid-June) and had ripe enough fruit by early September even from the direct-seeded ones; some of the direct-seeded ones even had more ripe fruit than the transplants! Fingers crossed for a long warm fall for you.
I wish I could send you some of my excellent small blue pumpkin and earliest gold nugget probable-crosses.
Hi Thomas,
They seem to produce earlier which is desirable here. We often have 150 frost free growing days but we also have much shorter periods from time to time. I think reliable, early production is increasingly important. However, I wouldn’t throw out a great tasting vining type that keeps well.
I’ll circle back to this next fall when I have an abundance. Or we’ll see what happens after I’ve opened the other two if they still have nice plump seeds.
I had a mud map of which maxima cultivar was planted where and misplaced it. I kept worrying about this. I’m finding it difficult to give up the attachment to names. The loss of the mud map has brought this into focus. I have to keep reminding myself that names are not important. This I know rationally but it has yet to seep into my bones, so to speak.
I found the mud map the other day and went out to the maxima patch to see if I could match unripe fruit to cultivar. Joke’s on me! The plants are so big and so intertwined it’s impossible to tell. I guess I can throw the mud map away!
We’ve already had one very light frost, about a fortnight ago. We harvested any maxima that looked vaguely mature. And now, frost is predicted for the next three nights so today was a massive harvest day, not just squash but at least they have now all been harvested. We’ll wait 8 weeks (I wrote the harvest date on each fruit) then start eating them. We intend to note, for each fruit, weight, skin colour, flesh colour, flesh to seed cavity ratio, flavour of raw squash, flavour of roasted squash (I love roasted squash) and flesh texture.
Next season we’ll favour the best quality fruit at planting time but won’t go overboard. At this early stage we still want as much diversity as possible.