Squash Grexes

[UnicornEmily (Emily Martha Sorensen)]

I have officially decided what I’m going to do with my squashes this year: I am going to put all of my seeds for all three species (pepo, maxima, and moschata) in a big container, shake them up, and plant a seed every few inches in rows.

I was going to be fancier about it, keeping track of data and stuff, but I’m running out of time to plant them, and I have so many varieties I want to try, plus the grex. So I’ll just plant them all, and I’ll be totally random about it.

I’m going to do the same thing with my melons and watermelons.

There will be five things I’m selecting for this year, in this order because it’s what seems to make the most sense:

Selection Round #1: Drought tolerance. I’ll let the environment do this as part of the initial selection. I will plant seeds only a few inches apart, and I won’t thin; I just won’t water them much. We’ll see who survives.

Selection Round #2: Earliness to fruit. Once a reasonable number of them have a first fruit, I’ll cull everything that doesn’t.

Selection Round #3: Summer squash taste. I’ll save the first fruit on each plant to grow to maturity, and I’ll harvest and eat the second fruit of each plant immature. If I like it as a summer squash, the plant will stay. If I don’t, the plant will go and its first fruit will get eaten as a summer squash.

Selection Round #4: Winter squash taste. I’ll eat the mature fruits through the winter. If I like the taste, I’ll save the seeds. If I don’t, I’ll eat them.

Selection Round #5: Storage life. Anything that rots doesn’t get its seeds saved.

What I want is thornless, drought tolerant, early to fruit squashes that taste good immature and mature, and have a long storage life. I won’t try selecting for thornlessness this year; I’ll just introduce varieties that are thornless or have minimal thorns, and I’ll select for that later.

I’ve decided I don’t care which species I’m growing. It makes no difference to me. I just want squash that match those criteria. So I’ll throw all three species together and treat them the same. We’ll see how they do!

[Joseph_Lofthouse]

I’d have difficulty tracking which fruit belongs to which vine if I planted that closely. I typically track that data point by scratching a symbol onto the fruit.

I might scratch VVE (very very early) during the first week of fruiting.
VE (very early) during the second week.
E (early) during the third week.

Symbols composed of straight lines (E) go on easier than curved lines (e). The different species likely set fruit at different times, so perhaps I, II, III, IIII, V, VI, etc…

[UnicornEmily (Emily Martha Sorensen)]

Scratching onto the fruits sounds like an excellent idea. Great advice about symbols, too. What kind of tool do you use to do that? Is a fingernail sufficient?

[Joseph_Lofthouse]

I typically use a knife, or a piece of wire from the fence.

[anon14613632]

I like your selection criteria. I have thought about doing your step one drought tolerance but have a hard time not babying seedlings. One day I need to try this, thanks.

[UnicornEmily (Emily Martha Sorensen)]

How deep do you scratch? I’m thinking it has to be more than a little scuff to be readable later, but I don’t want to cut too deeply and damage the fruit.

I like the idea of using a wire. That sounds convenient. Maybe a paperclip with one side unfolded would be something I could keep on hand to use in the garden. That may be comfortable in my hand!

[Joseph_Lofthouse]

I scratch the lightest possible mark, just enough to break the skin.

[UnicornEmily (Emily Martha Sorensen)]

Oh, and that’s sufficient? Cool! I’m guessing that means it gets bigger and more noticeable as the fruit grows, then. Thank you! That’s very handy!

[DebbieA]

Hi, all! How are your squash plants doing? As I noted above, I lost most of my first-round moschata seedlings to snails. I’ve since removed the majority of snails and also chopped and dropped weeds/grass in the area to provide an alternative food to the snails (thank you, @ThomasPicard).

How to deal with slugs/crimping a cover crop

[copied from the Thinkific community] 2022-09-30T07:00:00Z (UTC) Slugs may not always be a problem if you go to the source of the problem: what they prefer to eat! My friend, who has been cover cropping for nearly 10 years has no problems with slugs, even when he transplants a thousand young salads in the soil. Why? Once his cover crop is down on the ground (in march, end of may, or end of august, depending on the cover crop mix), moisture develops, mould, fungi, and what slugs absolutely pr…

I replanted seeds and also started some in flats as backup. So far, so good. Our weather has also gotten warmer and I suspect that the 2nd-round seedlings are happier with the warmer soil temps.

Let us know how yours are doing.

[markwkidd]

I have a question for more experienced squash seed savers.

I have a diverse mix of squash vines which are starting to produce fruit.

My understanding is that, given a healthy squash vine, if the first fruit is harvested as summer squash, wisdom is that it will stimulate the vine to produce more fruit than if the first is left to mature.

In the past I have realized that for winter squash, I’ve never harvested one less than fully mature. (I’ve not grown too much winter squash in general. Mostly a succession of orange pepo pumpkins)

I thought I was mentally prepared for the moment when I would need to start picking, and eating, ‘summer’ fruit from my winter squash varieties. However I see that my vines have a wide spectrum of vigor. Some I look at and I feel confident: this vine will be making additional fruit, no problem to take an immature one.

Other vines seem less vigorous and I am having thoughts like: what if they aren’t strong enough to benefit from this treatment.

I would be grateful for any rules of thumb, or broad philosophical reflections

[julia.dakin]

I love to eat immature Maximas, had one for dinner last night. But I use a little different strategy-- I take ones from plants that aren’t doing as well, or stems that have had recent gopher damage. Or just plants that have a few squash growing at once, so I know if it’s fantastic as a winter squash there will be more.

I haven’t tried immature pepos (esp delicata or acorn), does anyone eat those as summer squash? I’ll try that next.

[markwkidd]

@julia.dakin

I haven’t tried immature pepos (esp delicata or acorn), does anyone eat those as summer squash? I’ll try that next.

Thank you this is helpful. I have a hard time not becoming a partisan and advocate for the weak vines, your approach gives me a way to reframe picking immature fruit from weak vines as promoting vine/patch health.

[Lauren (Lauren Ritz)]

If the plant is not strong enough to survive having an early fruit taken, do you really want to keep seeds from it?

[markwkidd]

Sometimes, yep. For example, I know that egg gourd (pepo) does grow well in this region, in fact egg gourd seems to be native to this region.

For example: I definitely want to have genetics from egg gourd, and hopefully have a few egg gourd mothers for my project, not just pollen parents.

If my egg gourd vines aren’t doing well, it could be that they aren’t a good fit for this particular microclimate, or the weather has been poor, etc. But I’m working with two different wild accessions, and I know that I would like their genetics in my project. But I’m not going to be fertilizing them, that’s not the kind of project this is.

Those vines are so small because they got planted later than the rest, but it was the most straightforward example I could think of.

Another example is the inter-species male-sterile kabocha I have interplanted with the C. maxima candy roaster patch. Because of the positive potential of hybridization, I would definitely like to have seeds from the interspecific kabocha even if the fruit isn’t of good quality.

[trace63b (Tracy J Steele)]

Hello all, my apologies for being late to the game with posting any progress on a few seeds planted from the “Reckless” Pepo grex collection. This post is mainly to request assistance in identifying what has actually been produced.

A little background…I am a fledgling permaculturalist and this is my first attempt at landrace gardening. I am located in suburban Southeast Pennsylvania (Pottstown), 40 miles northwest of Philadelphia, zone 6a/b. The seeds were directly sown into my front lawn, after removing a small patch of sod. The plants are vining up an arch and rain collection downspout, and also along the ground.

The harvested zucchini is actually the second one produced from a plant that had been accidentally hit with a string trimmer and subsequently died off. I believe this to possibly be a black beauty. This plant was also the first to flower and fruit.

I have no clue about the other two, possibly true to seed or crossed amongst the plants? While taking these photos I just noticed a different vine/flowers altogether, possibly muskmelon but no fruit yet.

Along with identifying I would also like to know if either of these should be harvested yet?

I look forward to the feedback, thank you.

[trace63b (Tracy J Steele)]

[trace63b (Tracy J Steele)]

[anon14613632]

Looks good

[H.B (HasBean)]

@trace63b

The harvested zucchini is actually the second one produced from a plant that had been accidentally hit with a string trimmer and subsequently died off. I believe this to possibly be a black beauty. This plant was also the first to flower and fruit.

Along with identifying I would also like to know if either of these should be harvested yet?

First one looks like it could be one of @UnicornEmily 's zucchini x spaghetti squash hybrids. I believe the zucchini parent was indeed a black beauty.

For harvesting thoughts I will leave it to more experienced squash growers, but it depends on what you’re growing it for.

[UnicornEmily (Emily Martha Sorensen)]

Ooh, that’s a pretty striped pattern!

None of my squashes in 2021 or 2022 had stripes, so it’s probably not one of mine. Those stripes remind me of a delicata – could it be a zucchini delicata cross?