SQUASH (Maxima and Moschata) 2026 european focus crop

[Laura]

Hi!

This will be the thread for Squash for the European Focus Crop project 2025. If you want to read more about the project you can do so here: Community project: Focus crops in Europe I volunteered as a coordinator for this project.

This thread will be a place to share our questions, challenges and triumphs of the growing season 2026.

As soon as you begin to plan the growing season of 2026 you can post here.

We will use this thread to discuss, if some of us need seed and where to get it from. Since one of the goals of this project is to improve the diversity of the crop it makes sense to coordinate our seeds sources a little.

Since I will be coordinating both species (maxima and moschata in this thread), I propose that each person that posts makes a little header

like this: Maxima

so people can see at a glance what species a post is talking about. So, to get an overview about the existing diversity I ask that the participants share what seeds they plan to grow in 2026.

So myself I am saving my own maxima seeds propably the fourth year(?) in 2025. I started with some banana squashes, a grex from @Hugo and @ThomasPicard I got via the Serendipity seed swap. Last year I added some Kabocha from a farm stand and some seeds my uncle gave me. This year I added seed from a commercial seller https://www.kcb-samen.ch/

• Kenji Kuri F1
• Buttercup
• Tetsukabuto F1 (Interspecific hybrid)
• Silver Bell
• Bylinka
• Flat White Star 7001 F1
• Blue Banana
• North Georgia Banana
• Hopi Orange
• Golden Butta F1

So, for me, it is quite difficult to say what exactly is in my squash, since I don’t know what Hugo and Thomas started out with. But I can say that next year I will sow the seeds I save this year, so most if the varieties I listed above will propably donate some genetics to the seeds. Also i will again add in seeds from Hugo. other than that, i plan to put no new seeds in in 2026.

What kinds of seeds do you have access to and will work with? Feel free to add what kind of soil, growing challenges you are working with and of course, what your goals are!

Since this post is already long, I will write nothing about my goals etc and simply link the thread of my personal squash project: Cucurbita maxima landrace in Switzerland

List of participants per 27.11.2025

@Laura @ThomasPicard @mare.silba @Hugo @malterod @mtttthwww_vdp, @Saskia, @Evelyne, @jackpeppiatt, @Tanjaeskildsen, @Jacek, @WojciechG, @lenaic (with maxima and moschata), @Soeren

[Hugo (Hugo Morvan)]

You’re out of luck Laura since i’m i’n the dark 100% i’ve been mixing for years and always have done with what people gave me on seed exchanges with names i forgot and people just give me seeds from ‘good tasting’ pumpkins and butternuts. A good part came from a mega donation of Thomas at some point and if people liked to send me some stuff of theirs from Europe.

The good news is i’ve spread them everywhere in Europe and France, so we’re all in it together by now.

But weren’t we supposed to mix everything up? I usually save seeds mostly from ones that i really like taste wise or longevity wise or size or shape or colorwise or fleshthickness wise and tried to make those grow most of the population. And plan to receive some of Thomas wide grexes again if he’ll be so kind, which he said he would be.

What as a group are we going to select for? My idea is taste, taste and thickness of flesh with not too many seeds and keep tasting through the season and keep these seeds apart in differing boxes and then exchange with everybody. I’d like to forget about funny shapes and colors for now. Oh yeah and not too big would be a good criterium as well as people don’t really want those because they find them too intimidating and many people live in small family units now.

Let us discuss and then i propose you decide as leader of this group for this year what our criteria of selection are and what we exchange amongst and people can always of course have their own side projects and mixes for themselves and exchange those amongst people who agree with their terms and criteria.

Another little question is about feeding them. Do we feed them compost at all? And how about watering?

One fool can ask more questions then 10 wise can answer, but still let’s try to get to some agreement here.

[Laura]

Thanks for your input @Hugo.

Well, I can certainly agree with selecting for taste and thickness of flesh. I can imagine that this is probably an almost universal goal. But, additionally, I like smooth skin, which is easier to peel than warty, knobby squashes. But maybe some people like this because it disourages pests (just a hypothesis) or they like the look?

I can also agree with small to middle size as a breeding goal. And maybe saving the seeds of the especially long keeping squashes separately would also be a worthy goal.

But honestly, I am far from experienced myself and mostly volunteered as a coordinator so I could contribute to the community with organisational stuff. So I see myself less like a leader and more like a secretary for this project.

Concerning the mixing: Well, I understood it like this: If we don’t mix now, we will certainly mix our seeds at the end of 2026!

[Laura]

I had another thought: Maxima and Moschata will propably define their goals separately. If they overlap; great, if they don’t, no problem, since we will anyway save the seeds separately.

[JesseI (Jesse Ilonen)]

@Laura

Well, I can certainly agree with selecting for taste and thickness of flesh. I can imagine that this is probably an almost universal goal. But, additionally, I like smooth skin, which is easier to peel than warty, knobby squashes. But maybe some people like this because it disourages pests (just a hypothesis) or they like the look?

There was a topic somewhere about community project that had too many/not well defined selection criteria and they didn’t make any progress in a decade so it might be A. Good to have well defined criteria B. Fairly hard selection for the most important traits if possible C. Have secondary traits that can be used, but should be only applied if main goals allow that. So more slow selection in those traits.

Then question is which are the the traits to concentrate on? Size, taste, flesh thickness are good traits, but those also might not be too uncommon either. I think the most usual common challenge around Europe (and world) is water efficiency. There was some talk about earlier rooting from leaf nodes. In moschata that’s fairly common and strong, but maximas maybe not as strong. Never paid that much attention to it, but will look for it more carefully next year and maybe others should do as well. Very strong rooting in maximas might not be as common so it might be more a community effort to try to find those plants and share, increase seeds, cross and reselect from the population. I’m not sure how to define right now which are strong rooting other than test and see next year. Some of the moschatas I had last year were so strongly rooted from nodes that it wasn’t easy to rip them off the ground. So that would be a good starting point. Ofcourse that can only be done after season so before that there could be some visual selection to at least single out the plants that are weakest in that regard.

@Laura

I can also agree with small to middle size as a breeding goal. And maybe saving the seeds of the especially long keeping squashes separately would also be a worthy goal.

Personally I’m thinking 2-10kg range. 10kg is maybe little too big for my use, but maybe someone might find it perfect size. Moschatas are naturally smaller so those could be in the smaller range, maybe even 1-3kg? There could be also 2 ranges for maximas, like 2-4kg and 4-10kg, but that kinda selection could befew years down the line and first select of those that are on the larger side. Don’t have to be directly under X kg, but just getting closer to it year by year.

[Hugo (Hugo Morvan)]

Great info about that group that didn’t define it’s criteria clearly Jessel. Something to keep in mind for the whole of the European Focus Groups.

I believe we can squable about what is a good tasting Maxima or Moschata. maybe i prefer less sugary and more nutty, another might like the flowery overtones better and as sweet as possible. So that’s a bit of a problem. Maybe we should say that a strong tasting fruit is better?

Seb from PEPS group said he doesn’t sell big ones at the market gardeners, i forgot above how many kilo he said it was, do you remember Laura? He told when we were peeling all Marcela’s Maximas.

I prefer not too dense, hard ones, that’s hard to work with. What else can we find for traits that cooks might like? We should remember all the great info dr Lane Selman gave us about involving cooks in the breeding process. I’ll ask Dirk who is a chef cook what he thinks for starters, maybe Malte can tell us more about preferences cooks have as well?

Has anybody observed if there is a correlation between thin fleshed many fruit carrying specimens and those that carry less but thicker skinned fruits. Would make sense.

I believe Jesse touches on a very important point with the noding and root systems. Then there is a practical problem that i can see coming, to know this we will have to pull plants afterwards. I can agree to that, but what fruits belong to what plants if it’s all mangled up like how we like to grow to improve pollination. That’s very difficult to make sure to say the least. Should we grow wider spaced?

It could be very profitable to me to select for dense growing individuals, not ones growing out very far and plonking leave nodes here and there. Although too crowded might create a mildew favorable situation…

An observation i made is how much dew some catch in summer in the early mornings. What do we know of if the plant sucks this up? Do those hairs catch dew and then suck it up?

[Jacek]

I will grow squash the same way I did this year: dump wheelbarrow loads of semi composted horse manure in my orchard south facing slope, direct seed and not water beyond the very beginning.

I like them to ramble and cover a lot of ground from the mounds in search of light. I find it particularly cool when they climb into the trees.

This year the limiting factor was water supply. From one bed of about 4 sacks of alpaca wool covered by maybe 3 wheelbarrows worth of horsemanure planted with Going to Seed maxima mix and Delicate that I got from the market in Gap I got just 4 fruits. One big Delicata, one small Delicata from the same plant, one 20 cm diameter maxima and one tiny maxima from another plant. All were watery and pretty tasteless baked. They were better eating raw.

Next year I would re-use the alpaca wool bed. It should hold water better by then. And set up another 3 or 4 beds, this time without the wool. Just 3 or 4 wheelbarrows of horsemanure each. This set up should grow about 16 plants I think. Depending on water supply from the heavens and competition from the trees.

I still need to check what seedstock I have.

Here a couple pix from this year for illustration:

[Hugo (Hugo Morvan)]

This is what the AI said about drought tolerance in Maxima.

Drought-Resistant Varieties of Cucurbita maxima in Europe

Cucurbita maxima (winter squash and pumpkin species) is generally noted for its moderate drought tolerance compared to other cucurbits, thanks to its deep root system that accesses water from lower soil layers. However, specific varieties and landraces vary in resilience, particularly those adapted to Mediterranean or continental European climates with irregular rainfall. Based on agricultural research and heirloom descriptions, here are the most drought-resistant ones identified in European contexts. These are primarily landraces or heirlooms selected or preserved in Europe, with evidence from studies on local populations.

Key Drought-Resistant Varieties/Landraces

Variety/Landrace	Origin/Country	Key Characteristics	Drought Tolerance Notes
BGR3329	Bulgaria (local accession in Bulgarian Gene Bank)	Medium-sized fruits; vigorous vines; suitable for breeding.	Identified as highly drought-tolerant in field trials (2019–2021) under water-limited conditions. Outperformed other accessions in yield and fruit development during stress; recommended for creating new tolerant cultivars.
Rouge Vif d’Étampes (also known as Cinderella Pumpkin)	France (heirloom, 19th century)	Flattened, ribbed red-orange fruits (15–25 lbs); sweet orange flesh; 90–110 days to maturity.	Plants exhibit strong drought and heat resistance, with good vine vigor even in dry conditions; tolerates irregular watering without significant yield loss. Widely grown across Europe for its adaptability.
Plovdivska (Plovdiv Pumpkin)	Bulgaria (heirloom)	Large, round orange fruits (up to 20–30 lbs); thick rind; good storage (3–4 months).	Adapted to Balkan climates with dry summers; shows resilience to water stress through robust root growth and sustained fruit set, though specific trials are limited. Preserved as a local heirloom for challenging conditions.

Additional Insights

• General Trends in Europe: Southern and Eastern European landraces (e.g., from Bulgaria, Italy, and France) tend to show better tolerance due to historical selection in semi-arid regions. Northern varieties like those from Germany or the UK may require more irrigation.
• Breeding and Research: The Bulgarian study highlights the value of gene bank accessions like BGR3329 for breeding programs amid climate change. European networks like ECPGR emphasize conserving such diversity for abiotic stress tolerance.
• Cultivation Tips for Drought Conditions: Plant in well-drained soil with mulch to retain moisture; space vines 4–6 ft apart for root expansion. Supplemental watering during fruit set is ideal, but these varieties can handle 20–30% reduced irrigation without major losses.

If you’re growing in a specific European region, local agricultural extensions (e.g., INRAE in France or IPGR in Bulgaria) can provide seeds or further trials. For more details on sourcing, check heirloom seed banks like Kokopelli (France) or local gene banks.

[Hugo (Hugo Morvan)]

For people who were not in ZMAG Zagreb Croatia. A cook called Dirk lives with me because he wants to learn about permaculture techniques. He was also in Croatia, cooking for the group and superimpressed (weren’t we all) by the superb work dr Lane Selman did regarding getting chef cooks and breeders together to find out what they like to cook for. Then the breeders start breeding and bring their newly bred c rops to events where they exhibit their products and chefs taste and do their cooking magic and people come and eat and test further what’s best. The whole community gets enthused and local market gardeners exhibit growth of 10-40% turnover. So the whole chain of green folk profits of a boost. She even pulls it off to get some folklore like festival events in areas where traditionally many tomatos are grown, but it can also be radichio or whatever crop. People come dressed up and it’s basicly amzing happy stuff she does.

Back to Dirk, we decided to immediately imply this technique as small as just inviting friends over and having every part from starter to dessert consist of mainly pumpkin. Tasting and having fun with pumpkins. I’ll post some pix tomorrow if it’s not too boring for folk here.

But he says that he likes edible crusts, because it saves a lot of time cleaning and it’s more nutritious on top. So smooth surfaced otherwise dirt collects. And they must fit into an oven and a hand must fit into the hole in the middle of the pumpkin for a quick seed pull. And the hole in the middle of the pumpkin so it’s better for evenly cooking it. This of course is only the opinion of one cook so holding onto it like a breeding concept is silly., but it’s examplary to explain what kind of useful information this kind of co-operation provides. Maybe @malterod who works at a cook school can fill us in later with his findings regarding what his cooks like to see in Moschata and Maxima.

[Laura]

No, I don’t remember it. But I would agree with @JesseI that between 2 and 10 kg is a nice range. We can always save some seeds from bigger or smaller fruit if they are exemplary in other ways.

Well concerning the taste, I would be in agreement if everyone just selects for their individual definition of good taste, as long as it is not bland or a disagreeable taste (very bitter for example).

I agree that Squash with very thick/ hard skin you can hardly cut with a knife are bad news. Or if they are that hard, they can’t be big, otherwise the first cut is really dangerous. So if would be better to keep out all squashes that have to be split like wood. But thin skin may also have unwanted drawbacks. I believe in my own squash thread I was warned by Jesse that Banana Squashes have a very delicate skin that rots easily if it gets in contact with already rotting organic matter. I haven’t yet seen this in my Banana squash, but it is certainly worth keeping in mind that there may be a tradeoff between thick skin and rot-resistance.

So how can this be balanced? In baking there is room for squashes with a thick rind. You bake them cut in half and afterward, the flesh and the rind have parted from each other and the meat can be scratched out easily.

Concerning the rooting: We could have a look at how @ThomasPicard does it, very organized and neat. Me personally, am not tot fond of this style of growing because it is quite a lot more work that my low-input chaos garden manure pile style. But then of course I would expect that Thomas makes much faster progress in his work. Is there some kind of middle ground?

And concerning the rooting: I had one squash last year that rooted at every node. It is the big green one that came either from you or Thomas (You already said you don’t recognize it, so it must be from Thomas collection) Anyway, this squash was at the edge of the manure pile and it rambled out onto the dry ground and rooted there. Of course, I can’t know if it only did that because it was at the edge of the manure pile in thinner manure, but it was interesting nonetheless. The other squash plants that rambled about did so in the Grass and didn’t root there. So if we agree that rooting will be an important trait for us, i will save seeds from this plant separately, plant them separely next year, so I can watch how they behave…

Well, i have always liked the rambling habit of squash, because then i I can use them as a sort of groundcover…

@Jacek Seems, that you, me and Hugo all grow our squash more or less the same way! I did water last year because my manure pile was in the rain shadow of a building, but next year they will have to prove themselves to me!

Concerning drought resistance: Are plants with smaller leaves better? I had a study somewhere about the connections between leaf size and climate, will have to dig it up…

[ThomasPicard]

@Laura

Concerning the rooting: We could have a look at how @ThomasPicard does it, very organized and neat. Me personally, am not tot fond of this style of growing because it is quite a lot more work that my low-input chaos garden manure pile style. But then of course I would expect that Thomas makes much faster progress in his work. Is there some kind of middle ground?

Hey Laura: let me get this straight : my growing basics are very very simple: just throwing seeds in a shitty acidic zero input ground, with or without a tarp, and then 6 months later come back to harvest.

What could be felt complicated is the other things: like thinning, or more to the point: different reflexions and studies on storage, rooting systems… but my basics are… basic! I These “additions” are certainly a result of my passion and meant to make progress faster towards certain aims (vigor, so high yields, then storage and great taste). Could be inspiring but certainly not to be “studied” with such passion for everybody, specially on very small scale. It’s kind of a nerdy thing. Had 2400 plants in total just at my place last year in 2025, including 600 Cucurbita (moschata, maxima…) and other 1200 cucurbits… and plenty of time to get into specifics

[Laura]

Sorry Thomas, I didn’t want to misrepresent your process. i was thinking of your field with the tarps, where every plant has an individual hole.

[ThomasPicard]

Oh yes, got it. But we should understand that what’s easy for someone is complicated for an other :

Accessing manure is easy for some, impossible for others, getting a used tarp from farmer has been easy for me, making to my eyes the easiest way to grow plants with zero irrigation, plus saving crazy time in next years, for others plastics is unacceptable in essence… etc. All kinds of nuances.

That’s why my take on our focus crops is that our seed increases and sharings criterias should be the simplest possible, and we should beware of getting sufficiently into specifics (maximum diversity + great taste and thin skin for ex, adding possibly long storage) but not too much (like rerooting capacities… as no one really knows anything about, AI just regurgitating the crap that’s on the Internet. Best scientists don’t know a thing about it! I’ve had first hand experience on that with the bests).

I see our community as facilitating individuals or local collectives, as we are offering the basicalities : seeds as a tool kit. Then the REAL “adaptation”, the real breeding job being done by individuals: with a tool kit you can do harm or incredible things. Like giving chickens doesn’t say if those chicken gonna starve to death in one of the receiver’s backyard, be roasted the day of the arrival, produce 100 eggs and then be eaten by a fox, or go through “chicken increase” + incredible breeding and ten years afterwards ther would have been 1000 newborn chickens, 100000 eggs, great tasting chicken served by the best cooks… and crazily adapted. Metaphorically it’s gonna be our seeds’ destiny. And so for now I guess we should discuss the thing under a certain level of nerdiness. Keep it simple.

We could go back to “proofs of concepts” and coming to a common understanding later as there are completely different takes on that, as I underlined before you left Croatia (sunday).

That’s why I believe we should keep the focus on 1-2-3 easy criterias and being wary of not getting too much into specifics at this stage, or we’re gonna loose the focus which is to start our breeding efforts on some particular crops.

What I mean by that, and what will make my take much clearer, is that, with the PEPS group at last autumn-winter season we focussed on gathering farmers’s dreams or interests, to be able to provide them with diversified seeds so that they could do a FIRST HAND EXPERIENCE in spring summer season (for annuals), and it’s only now, from their parallel experiences (like nearly 10 different farmers working with my watermelons and about the same number with some of my special moschatas) that they see results and can share experiences, build a common understanding, go to collective questions, start digging into more specifics, possibly coming into more nerdy stuff if they see them as relevant for their breeding effort. So to say : go from basics to complicated, together, which is quite appealing, not to nerds like me, but to other farmers or gardeners that may want to join in.

[Patate]

From my experience co-managing the canadian seed share program (beginning of second year now).

Ensuring people receive seeds, grow them, save seeds, and that some growers return seeds from what they think is their best plants (or even just as a growout without selection) is already a worthwhile achievement.

The magic can happen in individual gardens, and in collaborations that form around specific crops.

However! I won’t tell you how to manage european projects! Reading your posts and discussions is very insightful so please continue discussing ideas that don’t necessarily correspond to what I just said above.

[ThomasPicard]

Facing my shelves and before selection I’m wondering what do we want pratically, for what exactly, and after those recent exchanges I feel like that if I just concentrate on taste quality it’s enough for now as this is already super diverse.

“Taste quality” can be seen as pretty subjective though, and can be done in many different ways. But for now I believe it’s good enough : we ensure there is a potential for a great enjoyment of the crop, whatever this “taste quality” is made of.

I would add to that a preliminary criteria the perfect health condition of the fruit (no rottening appearant), at more than 2 months post harvest. So to make sure what’s in our seed lot has a decent storage potential too.

If we agreed on this type of short list (so excluding others to keep it simple: fruit size, yield per plant, particular shape of the fruit…) I would then wonder about quantities and - more to the point - do we want seeds from each fruit separated? I know it’s @WojciechG who is doing that and that enables him to compose packages for everybody with maximum diversity : each seed coming from a different individual fruit. I received that couple years ago, it was amazing .

That too has to be discussed and in particular in regard to practicalities : everything must be kept simple and smooth by now I guess, so maybe best option would be just gathering “some seeds of our BEST squashes for each of us” and that would be perfect. No need to look into complexities like single fruit packaging. Would be my stance for now.

What do you think? We make it that simple : great taste + relatively long storage ?

What are we adding or not adding to these criterias? t

These are the criteria already mentionned in this topic :

• Flesh thickness

• Type of input or no input (manure…)

• Watering (drought resistance)

• Smooth skin and/or edible crust vs thick rind, hard to cut through, not edible

• Rerooting capacities

• Fruit weight: under a certain weight? Above a certain weight? 2 different ranges in Maxima?

• Flesh density

• “Strength” of the flavor

• Bush vs. Vining habits

• Where the seed “hole” is located in the pumpkins : centered? (For evenly cooking purposes)

My take on this is that we could add up to 1 criteria to “great taste” + “long storage”. Something relatively objective and simple like thin skin in Maxima.

And in Moschata I would add nothing.

So keeping it under a certain threshold of complexity but with criteria which speaks to characteristics which are appealing to all of us : not narrowing it down to something too personnal.

What do you think?

@JesseI

There was a topic somewhere about community project that had too many/not well defined selection criteria and they didn’t make any progress in a decade so it might be A. Good to have well defined criteria B. Fairly hard selection for the most important traits if possible C. Have secondary traits that can be used, but should be only applied if main goals allow that. So more slow selection in those traits.

The post is there : The limits of undirected selection - #18 by ThomasPicard

So yes to recap that : if we want everything at the same time (=confusion) we are making sure we will achieve nothing. So before getting into more complexities (after / during 2026 growing season?) what’s consistent with that is a short list of criterias consistent with our overall hopes : simple, not nerdy. It’s gonna be the job of each of us to do the actual job of selection anyway : we’re just converging to offer the potential of doing something great, accelerating individual/local adaptation projects in doing so. Or at least it’s my overall take. What’s yours?

[stephane_rave]

Taste is indeed a highly subjective criterion (what is very good for some is bad for others)…
but I would tend not to want to define common taste criteria for the simple reason that we are doing this work with the ultimate aim of producing seeds that will be used to feed very different people.

Much later, it may be interesting to differentiate between specific culinary profiles for good squash varieties:
sweet varieties
creamy flesh varieties
flesh color varieties
…etc.

[ThomasPicard]

@stephane_rave

but I would tend not to want to define common taste criteria for the simple reason that we are doing this work with the ultimate aim of producing seeds that will be used to feed very different people.

So yes to that regards our respective subjectivity is somehow helping making sure the potential for satisfying many different people is kept : we’re not narrowing it down to one taste bud.

Then what’s your take on adding or not adding criteria, and on the 2 criteria shortlist ?

[stephane_rave]

For now, I’ll just make a list based on one criterion:
taste, keeping the seeds from the best squash without defining what a good squash is.

Storage is good… but honestly, banana squash are the best for me, but they don’t keep well… but I don’t care, I eat them before they have time to spoil.

[Julied]

I’ve been reading your Focus crop posts and I’ve got a question, hope it’s ok.

Are you trying to create a collective landrace or share seeds for maximum diversity while fine-tuning your own individual landraces? To me, it’s two very different goals…

[ThomasPicard]

Yes I feel a level of confusion too. We should refer to the original topic and get back to its basics. If there is a level of confusion there too we need to adress those problems in that central topic, not in those “satellites” topics.

There it is : Community project: Focus crops in Europe

Thanks for reaching out and expressing that @Julied . It’s very useful indeed, very much appreciated.