Update on the spaghetti zucchinis!
I’ve now opened four of them. They’ve all tasted good, although my favorite was the second one. I’m saving at least 20 seeds of each fruit for myself, and setting the rest aside for sharing (and/or wildly oversowing to test for drought tolerance).
There are nine left in my closet. Still no signs of any spoilage, and they’ve been sitting there for over four months.
There are another fifteen on shelves on my hallway bookcases, which I harvested about three months ago. They still have green rinds and are hard as rock. They’ll probably turn into marrows by the time I finish the ones in my closet.
There are another twelve in a box on the floor of my bedroom, which I harvested about two months ago, my last harvest the night before the first frost. Ditto, although the smallest one is feeling a bit soft, so that one may have been too immature to age properly, and it may be spoiling. If I get around to it, I may open it up to find out (and eat it if it’s fine) in the next week. If I don’t get around to it, well, I’ve moved it to another spot, so if it’s spoiling, it won’t affect anything else.
I harvested them all immature – after being on the plant for two to three weeks – so if they all turn into marrows I can eat as winter squash, that’ll be pretty awesome. I thought I had a problem with too much summer squash that I couldn’t keep up with. It’s looking like I was growing an abundance of winter food, which is a solution, instead. Neat.
I also opened one of my Zucca gourds that I harvested immature because I planted the seeds way too late in the season. It’s been on my shelf for two months. The one I ate two months ago had tiny, immature seeds. The one I ate this week had larger, better-formed seeds, half of which sank, so I saved them. I’ll leave my third and last Zucca gourd on the shelf for another few months. I’m guessing it won’t spoil and will give me fully formed seeds. I will add that the closer-to-ripe Zucca gourd had less flesh, a much harder and less palatable rind, and less flavor than the unripe one, though.
Five of my six Israeli melon fruits were slightly immature when I had to harvest them before the first frost (sniffle). The last one I ate had spoiled a bit after two months on the counter, not a big surprise. The other four were still fine after a month on the counter. They weren’t as sweet as I want my melons to be, being immature, but they tasted fine, and giving them that extra time did seem to help the seeds finish growing, which were fully formed and in great shape.
So, I’m starting to think it’s not just my spaghetti zucchinis in specific that can mature quite well off the plant, but many cucurbits in general.
I may try testing some maxima squashes next year to see if they’ll let me do the same thing. If so, I may be able to double my harvest by removing the earliest squashes halfway through the growing season and having them finish ripening indoors. If I can get away with that, I love the idea for increasing the harvest within a small growing area.