Has anyone in the group had success in breeding your own tetsukabuto?
Last year I planted Kabocha and Black Futsu in the same spot, and used a single trellis shared by both. While the futsu never produced fruit, it made plenty of male blossoms, and I saved seeds from the Kabocha squashes.
This year I have several fruits that appear to be Tetsukabuto. 5-6 inch diameter, perfectly globe shaped (not flattened at all), very dark green skin (almost black), shallow ribs.
I’ve had success with crossing C. pepo pollen mixed with C. maxima pollen onto a C. maxima Ovary, fruit formed but got stolen or eaten by deer.
Honeynut is another interspecific cultivar of C. maxima x C. moschata. It has been stabilized.
This is very interesting, please do also take pictures of the Peduncle (Fruit Stem) & Seeds, it’s the easiest way to ID Cucurbita species.
The problem most folks have in getting past the f1 generation of the cross is the fruit becomes sterile with no seeds. Easy way to bypass this issue is to have both parent species that made the cross present so you could introgress them all together (Where the whole swarm slowing becomes 1 species). Simply mix the pollen of all 3 plants with each other pollinating each ovary with the mixed pollen & you should be good to go.
I think, as far as this project goes, I won’t try to save seed from the tetsukabuto. I’m more interested in getting the best outcome I can from it- usable weight, storage longevity, other ways to arrive at a similar fruit, etc. If I focus on growing all of my maximas and moschatas together, hand pollinating indiscriminately, and letting the pollinators do their thing freely, I’m likely to get some highly prolific, relatively seedless, long-storing squash. All while also growing out my own landraces of maximas and moschatas.
ah I see, your main focust goal is a mostly seedless Squash? You aren’t planning on toasting squash seeds? I wonder if the smaller seed cavity it the way to go with the breeding focus?
Don’t know if that could be useful, but this year I have planted 4 different commercial “maximosch” interspecific hybrids: first in between my maxima plot, other in my moschat plot, 100meters apart. Name of these strains : Tetsukabuto, Iron Cup, Maukai, Shiatsu. All doing relatively good here. (related post here ). Very curious to see how these turn in later years… but I don’t have a clear project with these yet, more for fun.
I guess what I’m trying to do is increase my food production and long-term food storage, as a side project, while also developing my squash landraces. For example, this year most of my squash plants are bare of fruit, and I have only one or two fruits on each of the plants that bore (enough to advance my landrace seed project and have seeds to share.)… except the plant that bore Tetsukabutos. Six cannonballs on one super-strong vine that winds through the garden ignoring cucumber beetles, squash bugs, powdery mildew, multiple 100+f degree days. Do the math.
Actually, its pretty much exactly like the fifth photo in your examples. Peduncle is almost black, that’s what threw my off. Most of your images have light-colored peduncles.
Wow, yeah, if Tetsukabuto is far more prolific than everything else, as well as a much better survivor, it sounds like those are plants you want to grow every year!
It is an interesting question . . . if the whole swarm ends up introgressed, would that kind of behavior start being the norm for all your squash plants? If so, that would be pretty awesome. (Especially if the same plants can do all that and also make a few viable seeds.)
A really cool thing about that question is that you probably don’t even have to actively pursue it; as long as you keep doing what you’re doing, the chances of something like that developing eventually in your population seems pretty high.
Hi, folks,
Been out of things for a bit but I wanted to wrap up this fiasco. Turns out these were a intervarietal hybrid between a Small Pie pumpkin and a Jack’O’Lantern Field pumpkin, known as a “Mystic” pumpkin (I’m guessing due to the black color clearing to orange in the Fall).
A friend had given me a Jack’O’Lantern pumpkin last year, grown next to “Sugar Pie” pumpkins, and the seeds I saved were a cross, which grew very uniformly globe shaped and very black until harvest time.
Note on storage: I harvested my winter pepos in October, lost one to black rot, ate a few, and have ten remaining at year end.
How did those wind up tasting? Small Pie tastes good, and Jack O’Lantern tastes . . . yuck. Did they wind up taking after their tasty parent in flavor?
Flavor was okay for soup and pumpkin bread (I’m not a pumpkin pie lover), but the real plus is productivity and storability. Serious survival food. Most of my winter squash produced only one fruit per plant, if that. This one produced seven including one very undersized), three of which are still on my shelf at room temp.
I plan to grow them among my delicatas. I only harvested one successful fruit (several withered on the vine). Maybe I can breed in some better productivity to the delis, and better flavor in the pumpkins. I love this crazy landracy stuff.
I also plan on some guerilla gardening. Guess I’m just a rebel at heart.
