Grow report from 2024
This year the other gardener came back to run the school garden, which freed me up to teach more and begin a new school plot outside the city focused on breeding culinary landraces together with the chef students to grow food that meets the needs and desires of the kitchen
While establishing that project, we agreed that I could grow some pumpkin in the school garden. Here are some photos from this year.
I got the plants in the ground about 3-4 weeks later than I could. The seed were a mix of last years selected plants and some new seed.
Half of the plot is shaded by a large tree and only gets direct sun in the afternoon. Initially this made me a bit unhappy to grow Cucurbita there, but I figured that I would probably get some seed out of that would be better adapted to our sometimes very cloudy climate. And I would be curious to see if the plants could figure out solutions to this problem.
As you can see in the photo above, I welcome other plants and litter in my beds. Below is an image of a row of a named variety called Sweet dumpling that the other gardener wanted to grow. I love the flavor on it too, when I can get fruit from it, and it got good feedback at last years tasting.
As you can see, the plants struggle a bit. The leaves yellow and as the season progressed almost the whole bed died off as the neighboring beds with much more vigorous squash just filled in the vacant space.
Named variety growing in bare soil
Adaptive seed
One month later (mid July). Named variety marked white. To the right is C. moschata, a species that usually needs much more heat to grow well for me. And to the furthest right adaptive seed of C. pepo in even more shade.
Same day, genetically diverse seed of C. maxima grows vigorously.
I had some extra to plant out at the new school field outside the city. Since I only had half a growing season, I figured I would spend it just learning about the interactions between the site, the plants and the soil. Probably the latest planting of squash in my country (around two or two and half months later than normally planted) in mid July!
I had zero watering there, not even at planting time, and would only visit the site 4-5 times this season. If I could get any viable seed from this season there, it would have really useful traits.
Around one month later (mid august), I’m surprised to see how well the plants grew with zero input. Close up of some of the better looking plants:
Lots of competition here:
One month later (early september), a drought of around 1,5 month has severely stressed the plants. One zucchini-type pepo has set fruit.
Back at the school, we have access to water. One squash has trailed 3-4 beds and climbed two meters into a nearby apple tree where it set fruit.
Since we manage the school garden to allow the chef students to come and harvest themselves, they inevitably take some of the squash too without knowing to save seed from them. I harvested the rest this week.
The big yellow one is the one that hanged in the apple tree, so the students couldn’t see it. Clearly I got much less from the beds that were shaded, but was happy to see three pretty warted pepos with ripe fruit from the most shaded spot.
