The striped zucchini looks very much like my heirloom zucchini. I didn’t think I sent in any of those seeds, but it’s possible. Also possible that it’s an f2 or f3 of my zucchini x spaghetti squash cross.
If it’s my own zucchini, it will be a large semi-bush form, highly prolific, and the skin stays soft well past the point where it has possibly viable seeds.
I usually pick them between a foot and 18 inches, but they can be picked any time. If you want to get seeds, leave one of the earliest on the vine until it turns orange. I usually leave my seed zucchini until after the first frost. They take a while to ripen.
I have some stripey zucchini from my mix that I grew last year and sent in, so maybe it’s from me, and maybe a cocozelle cross.
I think you should eat them! Or grow the pumpkin for carving. For saving anything for sending in the the GTS seed project, here is the description from the steward who is @UnicornEmily
"Any Cucurbita pepo that tastes good. Please include a note saying whether the fruits were selected for tastiness as winter squash or tastiness as summer squash. (If it’s tasty both ways, make a note of that, and I’ll include some in each grex!)
"Pepo squashes are easy to grow, easy to cross, and popular, so it’s easy to find good seeds. Please send in your BEST seeds. We are particularly interested in anything with particularly good flavor as summer squash, particularly good flavor as winter squash, a shelf life of six months or longer, drought tolerance, or disease resistance (including powdery mildew resistance). "
Nice! I found that a few of my spaghetti zucchinis that I harvested very young last year managed to have a shelf life of six months even though the rind was really soft. They looked and tasted exactly like summer squash, except that they seemed to have matured their seeds into viability while sitting on the shelf. I saved those seeds!
@H.B The first one I harvested from this plant was completely dark with no striping and when sliced had the typical texture of zucchini with a mild flavor, and it was huge. I will pay closer attention to this one when I open it up today.
@julia.dakin oh they’re going to get eaten for sure. Other than the stripes are there any other characteristics to look for to assist in identifying? As for the pumpkins I’ll harvest the larger one soon and wait a while for the smaller one.
@Lauren I’ll leave this first one as I see at least two other starting to grow. If it helps in identifying, the zucchini is partially visible in the group of large leaves on the left.
Those seeds don’t mature after you cut it off. Seeds are one of the first to form and depending on climate you might get viable seeds fairly fast, but there might be significant variance between varieties. Some seem to grow to their full size fairly quickly and start ripening while others just want to keep on growing. So size isn’t key in maturity. Also stress might get them start to form seeds while smaller. Some summer squash have been as thick as my thumb when fully mature. Didn’t check if they also had seeds then, but they had hard skin and colour had changed. Dry and hot might be one stress factor that makes them to mature fruits earlier and smaller.
It is going to cross with my northern bush pumpkin then which is a pepo. I was pretty confident it would be the only pepo in the area and was trying to save space. I wonder what this cross will do to the offspring.
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If it came from my seeds, there are pumpkin genes in there as well.
If you don’t want the cross it should be relatively simple to cull early anything with a different leaf or growth habit than your preferred pumpkin. Once fruit appears, cull anything that has the wrong shape below the female blossom.
Remained green, no orange coloration. This was the only one produced.
13 inches in length with seeds (similar to pumpkin) measuring up to 9/16x3/8 inches.
Hard skin, required effort to cut.
Lots of moisture seepage from under skin and center seed area, slightly astringent in the mouth.
Very fine spines on stem.
Center seed area sticky and spongy, easily removed with a spoon (switched to a spurtle later).
Slight yellow tinge to flesh.
1/2 inch slice microwaved for 45 seconds still very firm, skin softened but not palatable.
Circular broken “spaghetti” pattern in flesh.
Raw flavor is mild and I’m still trying to determine a flavor profile/similarity
Just a quick reminder to all: Please save your seeds and share with us those you can spare. Seeds are viable for a few years so feel free to send in ones from your 2022 harvest as well. We are offering postage-paid shipping labels to help out. Thank you for keeping this project going!
Brilliant, I didn’t think of any of this for my project. I will apply it for next seasons plantings. I instead took photos, but didn’t count for how I was going to be able to keep track of each fruits location, or tell apart fruit that look identical. Starting out as a landracing newbie you don’t think about these things
I saw one of Lofthouse’s and David the Good’s YouTube videos where they do something similar. But I couldn’t follow through with mixing up all of the parent seed stock together.
I might be making it hard for myself, trying to keep track of what genetics are being represented, what lived/died in the line, all the record keeping stuff.
I think that I just need to experience how hard and difficult that stuff will be to keep up with, and find out the hard way. Sometimes you need to do it the hard way, to finally go through with the simplified way.
I had the same attitude originally. I eventually decided I wanted to mix them all up because I didn’t want to be biased in evaluating which plants were the best (based on what varieties I wanted to be the best). But keeping track of everything is of great value, too! Feel free to keep full track of anything and everything. You should do whatever makes you happy.
This is my first year landracing most things, and my first year planting more than a handful of squash plants. I never really cared for squash, but last year I grew a mindblowingly good maxima squash and now I’m hooked and curious.
I was torn between the simplicity/eventual inevitability of mixing everything up, vs. the desire to save lots of seeds from the really good squash I know is really good and grows well for me.
So Im doing a bit of a mixed system where on one end of the garden I’m planting several Gete-Okosomin, and on the opposite end of the garden I’m planting an unlabeled mix of gete-okosomin and various other maxima squashes. If the mixed plot has lots of yummy and productive stuff, I’ll probably mix everything together next year. Otherwise, I’ll have seeds with mostly Gete-Okosomin genetics to try again with
Most of my crop species this year have some kind of similar “known desired variety + random shaker jar” type system. I really don’t expect to take great notes, and doubt I will maintain most separation long term, but this allows me to play start saving seeds and increasing diversity while focusing on particular varieties/traits I know I like.
Landrace gardening doesn’t have to be all or none, so you’re system sounds like a good one. I wouldn’t want to lose a variety that I loved either. We still have to have something good to eat while developing those landraces.
