I’m making my plans for my pepo squash landrace this year. It’s probably going to be . . . a bit nuts. (Wry grin.) I’m going to use this thread to talk about it throughout my 2023 growing season. Also see this thread for the results of my 2022 landrace, and this thread for my plans to keep a separate delicata population in 2023.
My goal is to have bush pepos that don’t mind being crowded, don’t mind being dry farmed in my desert climate, are super productive, are early, have a super long shelf life, are thornless, shrug off powdery mildew, are tasty as summer squash, are tasty as winter squash, and provide a variety of different tasty flavors so that I don’t get tired of eating them. I feel I can be pretty ambitious because I’m about three-quarters of the way there with my spaghetti zucchinis already.
I’m thinking I’ll aim for twenty-four plants. In about two hundred square feet. In lots of heat, with stingy watering. I’m so mean.
This is exactly the same as the growing conditions I gave my spaghetti zucchinis last year, except with deeper mulch and less water, so I expect them to do fine.
I plan to plant three to four times as many seeds as I want plants (so about 75-100 seeds?), and then be selective about which plants get to live.
I do not plan to make the “tough decision” to plant them in clusters of three and thin two out of each cluster, which is what I see most gardening YouTubers doing. Instead, I plan to space the seeds about three to six inches apart and then make the easy decision to pull out anything that’s obviously inferior. Or just let the weak ones die on their own because they can’t handle the competition. That’s what I did last year, and it worked great.
If some spaces wind up overly crowded, cool, I want plants that can deal with it. If some spaces wind up empty, cool, I’ll plant bananas and brassicas there. (See this thread for my little banana obsession.)
Here’s my plan of action to select what will make it to my 2024 population:
- Before flowering begins: anything with bigger thorns than most of the population gets pulled out.
- Before flowering begins: anything that’s noticeably weaker and sicker than most of the population gets pulled out.
- After a third of the plants have set their first fruit: anything that doesn’t have a female flower gets pulled out.
- For each individual plant thereafter: I’ll leave the first two fruits to grow to maturity and eat the third as a summer squash. If it doesn’t taste good, the plant gets pulled out and its first two fruits eaten.
- After six months on the shelf: If an individual winter squash has no signs of spoiling and tastes good, its seeds will be set aside to be planted preferentially.
- After eight or more months on the shelf: Even more so.
I may also preferentially save seeds from things with softer rinds and the shape I prefer (long and thin, which makes it easy to stack on a shelf with less wasted space), but those are both mild preferences. As long as the rind isn’t a pain to cut, I’m okay with the rind being hard. And other shapes are no big deal.
Pepo squashes are known to last only three or four months on the shelf before rotting, but my spaghetti zucchinis (the result of my 2022 landrace) seem to have a shelf life of at least eight months, and possibly a lot more – there are some on my shelf that have been sitting there for ten months, and still look good. In fact, not one has rotted so far.
So I won’t accept anything in my pepo landrace unless it has a shelf life of at least six months. I may make an exception for something with a spectacular flavor that’s unlike anything else I’ve grown, but even then, it would probably get its male flowers removed in 2024, in order to force it to cross with plants that make fruits with better shelf lives.
My current plan is to include the following in my landrace:
- My spaghetti zucchinis from 2022.
- Lauren’s zucchinis that are used to being dry farmed here in Utah.
- Spineless Perfection (for the 100% thornlessness and powdery mildew resistance).
- Desi (for being really early to fruit).
- Ronde de Nice (for the flavor).
- Buffalo Bird Woman landrace (because it looks awesome).
Bonus Secondary Landrace!
I have about two dozen other varieties I want to try out, but I’m not sure if they will earn their place in my landrace. So I’m thinking I’ll plant a second wave of pepos a month after the first wave.
They won’t need to be separated by space, because they’ll be separated by time – all the fruits I’ll be saving seeds from in the first wave will already be on the plants before the second wave starts flowering. I’ll let them cross among themselves and also get pollen from the first wave, and I’ll select their population in the same manner. Anything good that comes out of it will earn its place in my 2024 landrace.
I may do this with all new varieties I want to test out in the future. I have around 150-180 frost free days, so it seems like a simple way to make sure only good things get added to my landrace, while also trying lots of new things and allowing the best ones to stay.
