One of the things I’m doing with squash is to favor long-keeping fruit. But this takes a lot of time. I just cut open my penultimate 2022 maxima because it was getting wrinkly. I have one left and it appears to be in perfect condition. I also have several spaghetti pepo left from that season. Most of my squash don’t reach full maturity before freezing weather comes, and so I pick them uncured and they turn to liquid after 4-10 months. This wrinkly one didn’t smell even slightly bad, but it was getting flexible and it didn’t make an appealing bite – almost no flavor at all.
Anyway, is there any down-side to proceeding like this? Is a fruit that can store for years going to be necessarily bad in some other dimension? Or can I just start out selecting for storage length and then from that population select for taste and have every reason to expect good results? (And obviously, a squash that grows here well enough to produce fruit in my short season is going to be baked in to all my selection efforts.)
Have you thought about storing them improperly and select for that? I would be interested in putting them somewhere with bad airflow and improper temperatures. Maybe that will give you the same data with less time?
Why do you want to store for years, when you can harvest a new generation every season? I harvest my squash usually in the first week of October. Somewhere in November we start to eat them, selecting for taste. Obviously, initially none are starting to be spoiled. But as time is passing by, we see first signs of spoilage. We try to use them all until let’s say April, when plenty of the fresh veggies start to be available. The seeds from these that last till then with no sign of spoilage are considered selected for long storage. From my point of view, taste is more important, sonce the majority will store for few months anyway, and a year is not uncommon.
Where I live, the first freeze can happen as early as the end of September (though that’s unusual), which seems to truncate the development of squash rind and seed. When that happens, I’m in a more secure position if I still have some put by from the year before.
I don’t love winter squash – it’s a thing that’s fun to roast and stuff as a feast element for the spectacle and it’s easy to grow Calories, so a safety net.
Black seed squash Cucurbita ficifolia stores well, as long as five years under ideal circumstances. It is mainly grown for its seeds which are highly nutritious, but the flesh is edible too. It will readily hybridize with other Cucurbita species. Have you considered making a cross with it? I don’t have seed but I think it’s available through online retailers.