My only interest in pepo squash is hullessness so I’ll be putting together a mix of these for next season. We decided this year that we’d use unripe moschata for zucchini.
I am growing Connecticut field pumpkin and New England sugar pie pumpkin. They will be pretty much direct seed and let them fight it out.
I don’t know if I’ll continue with them because I have alot more varieties and interest in my moschata and maxima. So I can collect seed from anything promising to pass on. 20 of each variety and planted together so the genetics should be fairly wide to add to a grex.
For summer squash I’m growing lemon squash. Round, lemon sized, yellow. They will be in the garden, away from the squash patch. So should be minimal possibility of crosses.
Also pretty much direct seeding and letting them fight it out. Minimal work except to keep them from taking over the garden.
I was never big on summer squash/zucchini/etc. So this is an experiment. If I’m still not into them I’d be happy to collect them mature for seed to send on. Assuming they grow well enough.
For years, I refused to work on most types of pepo squash due to the ghastly flavor.
Then I realized that I select for flavor in every species that I grow, and I could do the same with Acorn/Delicata. Therefore, I’ve been working on an Acorn/Delicata grex.
To me, squash flavor correlates strongly with flesh-color, so if I could grow a pepo with deep-orange flesh, then that might please me. I grow crookneck due to the deep yellow coloration, and cause I think they taste the best of all pepos. A grex of Acorn/Delicata/Crookneck might interest me.
I grew a zucchini landrace. Not for flavor, but because my customers wanted zucchini. I like my zucchini better as winter squash than as summer squash.
The hull-less trait interests me a lot. Too bad that the seeds become too defective to germinate reliably.
A cross between the two subspecies of pepo interests me, but projects like belong in the hands of young people, not the ancient ones.
I must be less adventurous than most of the people on here, because I am nervous about the idea of planting a reckless pepo grex! Maybe it is just my current lack of space…if I had access to a larger area again, I might find it interesting.
On the other hand, I really like the idea of donating seeds to a reckless pepo grex; it would make me confident that my material wouldn’t be a problem for somebody else. If they are bold enough to grow out who knows what, they will definitely be fine with what I’d be contributing!
I am personally going to be working toward crossing Costata Romanesco zucchini with a delicata squash; my goal is a landrace that grows large, tasty winter squash (I really like the delicata flavor, when I can get a nice one) and still produces good zucchini squashes that stay tender to a large size. Since delicata skins are usually edible (in good strains), that should be possible. And the Costata Romanesco has incredible vigor and productivity, though it lacks powdery mildew resistance and thus late-season production.
So I could donate seeds from that, as well as from an ongoing project to cross Joseph’s crookneck landrace with my favorite PM straight neck variety—hoping to combine the vigor and cold tolerance of Joseph’s material with the PM resistance, milder flavor, and smooth skin of the straight neck variety.
But since all these projects are ongoing in a fairly small space, mistakes could happen and I’d want them to go toward the reckless grex.
Have you grown Carol Deppe’s Candystick Dessert Delicata? She describes it as bred to be the tastiest and most flavorful squash of any species in her third book. I figured I should try them. I bought seeds, and I’m planning to grow them this year.
We could do a hulless grex, if we get enough seeds for one! That may be an interesting grex to try.
@MalcolmS, I’m planning to make some zucchini x delicata crosses this year, too! And the reverse, to see what happens both ways.
I plan to cross Candystick Dessert Delicata (Carol Deppe sold me on the idea of growing it ) with Spineless Perfection (powdery mildew resistant, completely thornless), as well as with my spaghetti zucchinis (eight months of shelf life, and counting).
It’d be pretty awesome to breed something that has all of those qualities.
Would you guys be interested in a grex of delicata / zucchini crosses? I imagine I’ll have a lot more seeds than I need myself, and that may be a really nice population to work with.
The number of grexes will depend on what seeds get sent in! The types of grexes will depend on that, too. Making tentative plans now seems smart, since it may influence which plants people choose to save seeds from to send in.
Tentatively, let’s say I want a maximum of eight grexes for pepo squashes the year, and a minimum of three. I would personally love to see one of those grexes be focused on drought tolerance, and one of those grexes be focused on tastiness as winter squash. But I’ll follow whatever you guys want to share and receive.
One of the seeds in the pepo squash Winter Mix this year is an interspecies hybrid: pepo x moschata. Maybe it’ll have some of moschata’s skill at bug resistance, and maybe it’ll be able to pass it along to offspring!
The person who sent it in said it was a fertile interspecific cross, so if it does well, hopefully it can pass along some positive moschata traits (like stems that squash borers can’t penetrate) to your pepo population.
There should be one seed of that in each Winter Mix packet. It’ll be the biggest seed.
Ohhhhhhh. I think you just made my day. No, my year!
All of my pepos were wiped out by squash vine borer last year, despite early signs they might make it. Only a bush scallop produced anything, and I didn’t notice until after my late-fall surgery recovery was over, so the one squash it made was dry, frozen, and broken in the garden (so most of hte seeds were moldy and who knows if they’re viable?) before I even noticed it.
Even one moschata hybrid pepo with a chance at resistance would be amazing! Though I wonder… can the moschata/pepo hybrid make any fertile offspring with Tetsukabuto (moschata/maxima)? I have some on the way, and it could be fun to try if I get enough blooms…
I have no idea if they can cross, and I think you should totally try it! It’d be really cool if that works.
If I were you, I’d do a bunch of hand-pollinations to ensure you get crosses with that plant and all your other pepo survivors this year (if you have any). You never know what that diversity may bring in the next generation. Hopefully awesomeness!
Speaking of which, I don’t know if your moldy seeds are viable, but I wouldn’t be surprised if a few non-moldy seeds fell into the soil, and you get some volunteers. If it survived your difficult bug pressure, it will be valuable genetics for you, so I hope so!
I am reading all of the posts that have been made to this thread, and have some questions. I have always heard online that crosses between different squash species is impossible. Is this true?
I am asking because I see the mentioning of pepo x moschata, moschata x maxima crosses in this thread.
I just wanted to clarify that it is? So I go about organizing my moschata, maxima, and pepo projects accordingly. Also, if it is possible is there a difference between the order of the species that is leading in a cross, for example, moschata x maxima, vs maxima x moschata? Is this what y’all mean by interspecies hybrids? It there any pros or cons, to crossing species rather than keeping it a single species?
Not impossible – just improbable. This is common with plants. A lot of times, different species in the same genus have some chance of crossing successfully; the success rate may be very low, but it’s often higher than 0%.
If you haven’t already, read Carol Deppe’s Breed Your Own Vegetable Varieties! (For many reasons, this just being one of them.) One of the things it goes over is interspecies crosses, which are often a good way to start breeding something brand new and neat.
That’s one of the books that I’ve been meaning to get! Just haven’t yet. And we’ve heard it being recommended over and over again, so many times too. I’m waiting for my birthday to get it soon.
It’s SO GOOD! All three of her books are so good. They’re awesome. I have now read them all twice, and I’m sure I’ll read them again in the future. I hope you will love it.
I will definitely try to read all of them then. And I will see if I can have the public library order them until I can get the physical books.
(I read some more of the the other discussion pages and didn’t know that she grows and sells her own hybrid seed too. That’s cool! )
There is this one book that looks helpful to mention. I haven’t read it, and don’t have it yet but it looks promising. David the Good mentioned it, so it must be a read.
I want to put some info out there: Some public libraries will let you order new books on their website. It’s usually under their "Recommend a title” or “Suggest a Title for Purchase” sections. Or you can stop by in person and ask them how to do it.
I’ve read it, and it was solid. I’m pretty sure I read it because somebody here recommended it to me.
You can definitely ask your library if they’d be willing to purchase a book! My local library calls that a “purchase suggestion.” There’s another alternative to consider, too, especially if your library says no to buying a copy:
I bought seeds, and I’m planning to grow them this year.
) with Spineless Perfection (powdery mildew resistant, completely thornless), as well as with my spaghetti zucchinis (eight months of shelf life, and counting).
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