I agree with you that great taste and long storage should be our main focus.
Regarding all my vegetables they self select for slug and snail resistance. And they must survive the very wet and rainy spring, the very dry June, July and August and the rainy and wet September.
The other requisite can be selected from everybody that will receive the seeds, I think.
As a guide, I suggest looking at the goals we have when we get confused. The goals of doing this project is:
Seed increase for the community. Squash are prolific seeders so this will happen with little effort if we focus on this crop.
Increase diversity and quality of the squash seed in our community. This is where the discussion in the thread has gone mostly and perhaps it shows where our energy is.
Create a focus and resource for new members. For me this effect comes naturally if we put focus on the crops. It mean we will create some natural points of becoming part of the community too and easy point of entry to become part of something. So keep that in mind the coming months as we get new members - this would be a good place to get involved (and get seed). And it will be the seed we will share first with people interested in our way of growing.
Create adapation gardening success stories (pictures!) that are closer to our region and generate data that can be used as proof of concept for adapation gardening. My add is that we also want the stories of failure (and sometimes those stories have a triumph in the end - as anyone knows that have grown a diverse population one year where all but 1% survived, which then provided beautifully adapted seed the coming generations). The point here is set ourselves up for powerful narratives and then try to see where it goes without cheating, so the stories are also true and can be reproduced. A simple project for someone who struggles with squash for some reason would be to grow one row of named commercial cultivars next to one row of our most diverse squash seed, then take pictures over the season and evaluate the results. Save seed, then continue to do the same documentation one or two years more.
As for increased quality, I would join @ThomasPicard in singling out taste as a main focus.
Stephane is right that taste is subjective. That doesnât mean our subjective taste is random or radically different. For example, we know that most people like a relatively high sugar content in many vegetables - and this goes for squash too. By the way, high sugar (dry matter) content usually corresponds to creamy, smooth texture. So these are not so different criteria to select for.
Secondly, subjectivity can be worked with through engaging lots of other people in tastings. Itâs also much more fun than wading through endless amounts of squash on your own, where it is highly likely that you lose your sense of judgment - a well-known phenomenon at my school where colleagues taste studentsâ dishes for hours on end every day. So the solution would be to get other tongues in on the judging.
The theory on what a good tasting squash is or isnât doesnât matter so much in the end if you just get people to taste the squash, rate them (on a hedonic scale), talk a lot about what youâre tasting (and what you like) and then find the winners.
My proposal is that as part of our squash focus, we commit to organizing more tastings than we normally do. We can share tips and experiences so we make sure they become both enjoyable experiences and also raise the precision in our taste selection.
I agree, those are two different goals. In a way, we try to work on creating a very diverse population that has been selected on a few criteria. So not maximum diversity, but as diverse as can be while selecting for a few traits (like taste). The promise for me is that we might be able to create an evolutionary population that is highly likely to adapt to different places and that is also more likely to have better-than-average tasting squash in it.
2025 has been my first year of landrace gardening, and Maxima was my focus crop to get into it 
For 2026, I was planning to keep going with Maxima, and to add Moschata as my second focus crop.
So, I am naturally motivated to contribute to this collective focus crop effort! Especially if we donât need to participate to 3 groups (not sure yet if I can have enough time in 2026), and especially if the goal is toward creating and maintaining a diverse evolutive population to help others kickstart their adaptative projects more easily (rather than creating a collective landrace).
For Maximas, if it is useful, I can probably supply some store-bought seeds from about 20 varieties (leftovers from last year), and probably seeds from my own 2025 harvest (but I havenât extracted the seeds yet). I am also happy to receive some seeds to try multiplying them.
For Moschata, I have very little diversity, so I will happily receive seeds from this group if possible. And I can also consider buying some store-bought seeds, keeping some for me, and sharing some with the group to increase chances of success (I had a huge slug pressure here in 2025).
Following the common practice on GTS forum, I was about to centralize on one topic âLĂ©naĂŻcâs landrace gardening experiments in 2025â, including some details about Maximas. But, for the good functioning of this group, and for avoiding redundancy, it feels more appropriate to share my 2025 Maximasâ experiments here in this topic, right?
As an appetizer, here is the result of my 2025 Maximasâ first year seeds increase! I planted about 150 plants, and those fruits are the few survivors to the huge slug pressure I had in spring, plus two droughts and one tornado during summer. 
Welcome aboard @lenaic and thanks for the beautiful picture 
i will add you to the list of participants.
We are still discussing on the exact goals of our focus crops and all the surrounding logistics, but we have decided that 1 crop per participant is enough, meaning people can participate with as many or few crops as they like, as long as they choose at least one of the six.
Concerning the sharing of seeds: We are still discussing the logistics in the main thread. But thank you for offering to share. I hope we as a group can finalize some sort of plan in the following weeks how exactly we want to proceed.
And concerning your questions about where to post: I would indeed avoiding posting many photos in your personal thread and posting them again here. But for example I think there is nothing bad about still posting some photos to your personal documentation thread. After all, people that are interested in your personal journey can follow it much better if it is not intermingled with other peoples posts. And it may also be valuable for you to have a kind of gardening journal that mainly belongs to you.
I - for example- have also my personal squash thread and I plan to still post there. I may post to my personal thread stuff like sowing dates, picking dates etc, so I have them all in one place. But discussions, pictures etc will propably be in here. And maybe I will post a link, so interested people know where i keep my more in depth information.
My personal guidline is: I donât post exactly the same stuff in 2 threads. If I have nothing new to add, I just link my post in the other threads. (but I am not a mod!)
I would love to participate with my ever-developing moschata landrace. It started with seeds sent to me by Joseph Lofthouse, many years ago. Every year Iâve added one or more new commercial varieties. I would love to add landrace seeds, instead of commercial cultivars. Thatâs how I dream to live with the landrace. I prefer the size as big as the plant can sustain, and a long massive neck. For a two-person household, we find long-neck moschata perfect. We can cut small slices from the massive neck, and sap starts oozing out. After 5 minutes, the sap can be smeared even over the surface, and it will protect the squash from drying out.
The seeds I add to my landrace, I hope the grower selects for taste and storability. Other traits I can manage.
And Iâll only be happy to share seeds.
Hi Soeren,
I am glad that you are participating. Your moschata sounds interesting indeed I was wondering if the sap is useful for something, thank you for clearing that up for me!
Great, I like this logic, Iâll do like this too, thank you 
Hi. Looking at your photo Iâd say the brownish in the middle (is it 1885?) looks like maxima x pepo cross. The stem isnât round and heavily scarred like maximas and shape is more like pepo as well, but colour doesnât look like it would be pure pepo as well. Maximas also more commonly have a ânoseâ on the other side, but that ofcourse doesnât show in the picture and Iâm sure itâs not as sure sign in crosses. Quite sure itâs not pure maxima. Just a heads up if you want to save seeds separately and check how it turns out. Where you interested in maxima x pepo crosses @ThomasPicard ? What do reckon of that fruit?
I think rerooting is sort of priority thatâs not priority, if it makes sense. Or it can be selected by water scarcity and selecting the best performers. At the same time people can look for the needle in the haystack by observing plants, but it might not be necessary if conditions are rough enough for special traits to have advantage. Still itâs interesting to observe plants and if there is something that looks like it has potential, separate it for future seed increase. But yes, it shouldnât be too complex. Overall better if contitions are on the rougher side, but that might not be always possible. At least I noticed that addidng too many challenges here will postpone the harvest too much, if there is a harvest. Where itâs possible itâs always good to try the limits. Otherwise you donât know what the limits are.
Another trait is size of the seeds. Generally I would think bigger seeds are better. Seedlings start bigger and so they should be better adapted to survive bugs and to emerge harder soil surfaces. Small seed cavity/thick flesh was already mentioned, but that would also limit the amounts of seeds to more reasonable. At least I donât see squash a crop where lack of seeds is ever going to be problem. Rather put the energy to grow flesh and bigger seeds.
Hi Jesse, thank you! I also found that this fruit had a weird shape, but I didnât have much experience to suspect a maxima x pepo cross⊠After checking them all again, this one indeed doesnât have the same stem as other maximas, and doesnât have a ânoseâ on the other side, but rather just a flat circle that does look like pepo. As you suggest, I will keep the seeds aside and check what happens next year!
One trait that came to mind when processing my last maximas was peelability (yes itâs actually a word, had to check) of the fruits after cooking. I only paid attention to my last fruits so this time no full selection, just paid attention how they might differ. I had couple fruits from which I could peel just the thin skin by taking hold with a knife and ripping it off like a plaster. I know you could just eat the skin if itâs smoot enough, but on the other hand if itâs burnt it might be better to peel off. If itâs really easy to peel, then you might as well peel it. Many times they arenât and alot is wasted by peeling. I will pay attention to this more next year and maybe I take some videos too. It looked really cool when it came of just like that. Only in few spots the skin was too rough that it wouldnât peel easily, but over 90% of those fruits came of without any problem. Unlike one other where it came of randomly. The ones that peeled had dark olive coloured flesh right under the skin. Wonder if that is also sign of some concentration of nutrients?
I have been thinking about how we want to distribute seeds to the people that need them. Since I am in Switzerland and most of you are in the EU, I am not suitable as a seeds steward who collects seeds and sends them back out. Therefore we will have to improvise.
Unless someone of you in the EU volunteers as a seed hub/ steward, I propose the following:
I have been thinking that I will send seeds from my personal stash to the ones that need some. To maximise the chance of the seeds reaching their destination, I was thinking I could send them from Germany or France, but I want to send all at once, because I am not THAT near the border.
Note: This system is only for this season, for the season 2026/2027 we will hopefully be able to streamline the process and maybe even do most of the mixing together in our physical meeting.
I have the following seeds (all maxima):
For some of these varieties I only have 3 seeds left in the packet, for some 10, but never many.
These seeds I got in our exchange in croatia or via the serendipity seed swap and I didnât plan on sharing with many others. Consequently, these are also in somewhat short supply.
On the other hand, I have a whole pickles jar full of my older seeds (2024 backwards). I dont know how good the germination will be, but I could do a germination test to find out.
So: How many seeds should such a packet contain? And are the seeds I have even suitable for our goals as a group?
I have been working 3 years on this mix, but there a definately people that have done much more and have much broader genetics. Additionally, my mix is quite heavily focused on the banana squashes, simply because I like them very much.
So, how do we organise this?
Our steps:
Who needs seeds and from which species?
Is there a possibility to get them directly (in person or in country) from another participant?
If no, are the seeds I talked about suitable?
If yes, I will try to distribute to members in need
If no, we will have to decide what to do as a group
So, please: who needs squash seed to participate in the focus crop?
@ThomasPicard @mare.silba @Hugo @malterod @mtttthwww_vdp, @Saskia, @Evelyne, @jackpeppiatt, @Tanjaeskildsen, @Jacek, @WojciechG, @lenaic, @Soeren
I donât need any extra seeds this year.
I will try and germinate the rest of my old seed stock plus the seeds I got gifted locally from a friend last week.
This is what I have:
Pink Jumbo Banana 2025
Black Kuri 2025
Crown Prince x ?? or F2 2023 - climbed into two trees and was tasty
Trombetta from Albenga 2023
Black Futsu 2023
Moschata from Nepal 2023
Crown Prince F1 2022
Unknown maxima 2022
Large Hokkaido from the shops 2022
Futsu Black 2021
Beretta Piacentina 2021
Red Kuri 2021
I was thinking of getting the Tetsukabuto and White Hubbard from KCB as well.
No need for seeds, thank you.
I no longer keep track of variety names, I am planting only my own seeds from previous year selection.
I combine seeds from all collected fruits that have passed selection into a single standarized seed pack (see picture). Each pack contains same amount of seeds from each selected fruit. I will be planting 3 such packs in my garden.
I have 5 spare packs. If anyone needs the seeds, I can share them.
I donât need seeds this year. To my moschata gardenrace I will this year add Tahiti from a fruit grown in a community garden in Copenhagen. Could be crossed from neighbor garden, which I find convenient.
Iâm only sowing moschata this year and I have plenty of seeds already.
I too donât need extra seeds this year.
I have my seeds from 2025, 2024 and 2023 and I did buy some more. And I hope to receive some more during two seed swaps in Italy in March and April.
Than I will decide what exactly to plant this year.
Hi,
Am very interested in this focus group. I feel the best contribute I can give is to tell you about the butternut landrace Iâm intentionally selecting since 2015 and some of the most particular criteria Iâm striving for.
-Cool soil/weather germination & development both in early and late season
-1-2kg fruit⊠good size for CSA boxes in my experience and reasonable eating window before spoilage after opening fruit
-8-10 cm diameter neck⊠for me, the ideal size of neck slices to roast
-Early production of female flowers as well as maturing of set fruits
-Smaller, more manageable and compact plants
-Extreme drought tolerance and regrowth after first Autumn rain
-And the more universal small seed cavity, deep orange color, taste and texture, long keeping ability, etc, etc
These are some of the criteria that make sense for my particular case. That I am already selecting for and am willing to continue to put the effort.
I could have mentioned âbig and palatable male edible flowersâ as one of the hypothetical objectives of the focus group but it doesnât do us any good if no one is pursuing thatâŠ
Hope this helps enrich the discussion.
V.
P.S. If it sounds good I still
have a handful of seed packets containing one seed from each of the best plants since 2021. Likewise, Iâm very interested, if any of you have varieties or lines that meet most of these criteria.
