Last summer I planted my zucchini spaghetti crosses. Most made pretty good summer squash, tasted fine cooked and raw at that stage.
Two plants produced most of the squash. I eliminated anything that started going soft quickly, eliminated those with thin flesh, and those that produced only one fruit. The pumpkin type seems to be self eliminating.
I went back into my storage and one of the squash (one I hadn’t intended to keep seeds from) had gone bad and infected the others it was stored with.
Two I gave to the chickens, who didn’t seem real interested. All had the spaghetti habit to some extent.
The Tatume crosses tasted great. That was off one of the highly prolific plants. Unfortunately the zucchini cross was meh. OK cooked, weird mouthfeel and almost tasteless. It just felt and tasted old. It had the spaghetti habit but didn’t break up into noodles like it should.
That was my other high producer. If I eliminate it, I can try again next year with the same seeds or start over with seeds that are several years old. I could go with just the tatume mix, but I don’t want to start narrowing the genetics so soon. I also don’t want to move ahead with something I don’t like.
I could start over at the beginning, crossing the originals with the tatume mix. A lot more work and puts me back to 5 years ago.
Could you clarify what your specific concern is? Are you worried about the viability of the seed, even though the squash started to spoil? I don’t work with squash, but in many cases seeds are still fine even if a fruit is too spoiled to eat – I’d just put extra effort into rinsing and letting them dry out before storing. For some species you even deliberately spoil the fruit when saving seeds (the fermentation method).
If you want to be even more cautious, you could save them in a separate container, so that just in case they do go bad they don’t take out more seeds. If you go that route, I don’t see much downside to trying, other than the time you’d put in.
Or are you concerned that the squash turned out not to keep as well as you’d hoped? I’d think storing well is a trait that’s easier to cross back in from another variety than good taste/texture, but again squash isn’t my focus.
I have two plants that produced really well, but one of the two doesn’t taste good as a long keeper. If I eliminate that one, I’ll have only one line remaining from this year’s plants.
If I eliminate that one line, all the remaining seeds will be closely related, and I don’t want to start developing a “variety” at this point.
To mitigate this I could revert back to other well producing squash from previous generations, or I could start over with the original seeds. I could also mix in the remaining squash line from this year with either scenario.
I’m just not sure which would be the best way to go.
I don’t want to assert that this is best, but my inclination would be to keep a few seeds from the bland zucchini, but more from the Tatume crosses, and also mix in some from the more pure parent lines that you like, as well as any new diversity that I could get ahold of. I’d spend a couple years just trying to hybridize for maximum diversity with whatever space you have, and then start selecting for the traits valued.
I think what I would do is narrow it down only to the ones you like, and collect more varieties that sound really promising, and plant the best old stuff along with lots of new stuff next year.
Remember, there’s a load of genetic diversity out there. You don’t need to keep things you don’t like just because you’re nervous about narrowing down the genetics too much. Select out whatever you don’t like, and add new things that seem fun! I bet that’s the easiest way to get a diverse landrace full of traits you like.
If the squash grew side by side, it’s likely that they shared pollen between them. Therefore the non-favored plant may have contributed it’s pollen to the other.