Thank you for this idea @Rachel. i just realised that I can make a row of manure betweeen a row of my fruit trees and plant the squash into this row. So I am adapting your idea but instead of making single heaps where I have to clean around every single mound, I am going to make a row and just mow the grass up to the fruit trees and not further.
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I like the row idea!
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The summer is over, my squash are picked and it is time for a little reflection. First: I didn`t make rows with manure after all, but planted about 6 squashes onto the manure heap and about 6 squashes into a little gardenign patch where I had Yacon the Year before, but which was quite overgrown with grass. The take-away is: if there is such a wet spring as this year, you can’t plant anything into grass, because it will take about one milli-second until snails find and devour the little transplant. Second: As I said: it was an absolutely horrible wet spring and the bigger part of my transpants simply rotted or were eaten by snails. The 6 squash on the manure heap survived, because it is too high up for snails. Even though they survived, the yield is very low with about one ripe squash per plant and several underripe ones, that I used as zucchetti. This is because in the wet spring and summer many of the flowers dropped off. If this is from lack of pollination or because they rotted, I can’t say.
Third: A big problem with the wet spring was that I could not plant out the little seedling when i should which meant they got much bigger in the pots than they should have. This in turn lead to injured plants in transport and handling. From the 16 starts i had, only 6 survived all this abuse.
Below I will post some pictures:
Seeing the positive:
I planted seeds I have saved myself and sedds from @Hugo and @ThomasPicard and it seems that there were for sure some new types of squash. i only recognize the Pink banana type. The orange, the turqoise and the the green squash look all like new types, so I am very exited nonetheless!
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Planning for 2025:
I already made a row of manure this fall, so I can plant in it in spring 2025. This has some significant advantages:
- I am out of my parents hair with my squashes
- I am not pressured to pick the squashes too early because my parents need access to the manure heap in fall
- I can plant more than 6 plants
I also expect that there will be some serious disadvantages:
- The location of my row means I may have to water some, because it is nearly in the rain shadow of our barn
- i may have some work to do with arranging the vines so we can still circulate on foot and with machines next to the barn
- Since the row is much lower than the manure heap, I expect that there will be more snail pressure
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I am already eating my squashes. Since I plan to make squashes one of my main crops, it is important to have many recipes in which I can use them. Until now I have tried the following:
- squash polenta, about two third maize flour, one third squash puree
- squash risotto: same
- squash soup (of course)
- squash in the oven, instead of potatoes
- squash puree as a base filling in tortillas, combined with various leafy green, cheese etc.
- squash bread. About 750 g flour, 500 g squash
Does anybody have any good recipes that use significant amount of winter squash as a staple crop?
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For the squash bread I used about 500 g of this beautiful squash:
For some reason the flesh looks really pale in the picture, it certainly wasn’t green-yellow, but yellow-orange. Not deep orange, but nice enough.
I will certainly save the seeds from this squash because
a) it tastes nice
b) it is a new type, possibly from @Hugo or @ThomasPicard
c) it survived being pecked by crows ( the deep scar on one side)
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I haven’t done it yet but it can be used raw in salads.
In this great great presentation Alex Stone talks very rapidly about this usage, as recommended by a chef she knows. She gave me the idea to try it.
By the way: will have loads of seeds of Tetsukabuto around spring to trade, partially grown in the moschata patch, partially grown in the maxima patch.
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Thanks for the video tip, Thomas. I watched about half of the video (had to stop because I still have some chores to do). But then I saw this video in the reccomendations, which looks even more relevant:
About tetsukabuto: I decided to splurge on some squash seeds for 2025. I ordered seeds of the following varieties from KCB:
- buttercup
- flat white star 7001 f1
- blue banana
- hopi orange
- North Georgia banana
- tetsukabuto f1
- silver bell
- golden butta f1
- bylinka
- kenji kuri f1
I focused mostly on squash that are early ripening (not more than 100 days), not too big, well keeping…
So as you can see, I added some more goals concerning the fruit quality to my landrace goals. At first, I didn’t care about fruit size, but since I’m not living on my parents farm right now, I have decided that small sqash are much more practical…for everything. To transport, to store, to use in a sensible amount of time…
The biggest squash I ordered is the Blue Banana, which is expected to get to about 5 kg. This is ok with me. The squash I began to use today is about 2.5 kg…
An additional goal would be squash with either a) edible skin or b)no ribs, nubs and warts, so they are efficient to peel. But this is definitely a secondary goal right now.
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wow this is a very useful video. The trials they did confirm my own experience that crown and sweet meat have the best storage by far. This was the impetus for what turned into my “blue grex” of these kabochas w/ blue/grey waxy skin. I’m in Eastern Oregon where it is very dry but also near grass seed production and I’m certain I have been slowly building up this same unfortunate rotting bacteria. I am going to pay more attention to resistance now. Thank-you for posting I hadn’t heard about this project at all.
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If you have extra seeds I would love to trade
Will have, definitely
I’ll send you some seeds of the big ones crossed with the maximas, marked like that
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I’m also looking for recipes so thanks for all your ideas.
I recently started using winter squash in “Thai”vegetable/tofu curry… went quite well with green curry paste and coconut milk + all other vegetables I had available. Proportionally, you can cram in quite a lot of squash and let most of it cook down into the sauce/soup.
[I use an 8L electric pressure cooker and fill it up]
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They look amazing😍
Wow! I’ll have to try making squash bread sometime. Do you put yeast in it?
Yes. I have experimented a little and settled on the following process:
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I mix two packets of dry yeast (one packet is for 500 g of flour) with a teaspoon of honey/sugar and water. I let the yeast work until it is very bubbly, about 20 minutes.
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Then I add 100 g oatmeal/ rolled oats and 200 g flour. The flour is either a whole grain flour or Ruchmehl (there seems to be no exact equivalent in English) and quite a lot of water. This I do by eye, but enough water that I can stir without a lot of resistance.
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Cover and let it work for about an hour. Then the oatmeal should have absorbed most of the water.
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Grate 500 g of squash and add to the dough. Stir it in with a fork.
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Add 2 teaspoons of salt and stir in well.
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Weigh 500 g of Ruchmehl and add in portions. The dough will be very sticky. At this point I put the flour on the table and the dough on top of it. Then I knead by hand until all the flour is absorbed into the dough. If you time it right you can roll the ball of dough over the table and gather all the flour so there should be almost no loss of flour.
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Clean the bowl and coat it with oil. Put the dough in and turn it around, so it has oil all over.
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Cover with towel and let rise for about 2 hours if it is warm and longer if the house is cool. You will need a big bowl!
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Heat the oven to 220 °C with convenction. While it heats, tip the bowl onto a big baking sheet with parchment paper. If the dough is well oiled it should not stick, if you want to be cautious, you can lightly oil the paper.
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Cut the dough with a knife in two pieces. Form two more or less round loaves. I do this by folding the edges of the dough under the bread, so it holds itself. Or you can use a form, like in my picture. The form has to be oiled as well.
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Put in oven and bake for 50 minutes. I normally reduce the temperature to 200 °C after about half an hour if I feel they get too dark.
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Take out and let cool well. While still hot, the bread will be very moist inside, but cooled it is quite normal?
Alternatively this dough is also nice for flatbreads.
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Last fall we began to make a manure line for my squashes. Every day, we took about 2 wheelbarrows of manure out of our cow stable. This was bedding/ Straw they had dragged out of the lying down area into the eating area and (because they are cows) shat all over. Twice a day we clean this out and dumped all the manure into a line. We stopped once the line was about 8 meter long and brought the rest of the manure to our usual manure-place. Over winter this manure broke somewhat down. I was not sure if this was a good idea, or in what condition the manure would be in spring. This Sunday (13.04.2025) I planted my seeds into the manure and I was pleasantly surprised. While the outermost layer of the manure is completely dried out, in about 5 to 10 cm depth it gets very moist. while in places the straw is still very recognizable, in others it has composted down to a rich brown mass. And in every place it smells very good. There is no smell of Ammonia, in fact, it smells like good soil! I am very surprized: How is this possible, over winter no less?
Maybe it is because the heap is long and slim and therefore air could penetrate in on the sides? Additionally maybe because it is on natural soil, soil life like worms could travel upward? Altough I have not found worms, but in the drier parts some ants…
Anyway, last sunday I planted my seeds. From each new variety about 5 seeds in one location, marked by a stick, so I know later, which germinated well and which didn’t. i ordered them alphabetically so I can taste test them in the fall and know which ones taste good, and of course evaluate their growth.
Additionally, I sowed all my safed seeds, but these I didn’t mark because they don’t have to proof
themeselves, they already have shown good taste and growth under my conditions.
So, this is my first experiment with direct seeding Cucurbita. Since I believe the manure will warm up slowly, I sowed them a month before my last frost date. I hope many germinate and not many rot in place. I am very exited for this experiment, because I would love to be able to direct sow squash. This would be the final step to make it an easy culture for me!
But I still have backup-seedlings I sowed and keep inside…
The upper picture shows the squash line which is very dry outside right now. The second picture shows the moist material that smells like forest soil. The third picture shows the not very decomposed material in the drier places…
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