Winter squash harvest time
October 17, 2010
Remember these babies?
They are all grown up now.
A light frost yesterday morning got me on the stick, I harvested the Sweet Meat winter squash yesterday and posted a few tips about harvesting and curing winter squash over at Simple-Green-Frugal- Co-op today.
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Food Renegade
Simple, Green, Frugal Co-op
Those are beautiful. We tried our hand with winter squash this year and didn’t have much luck. But we’re not giving up – need to find something for our area.
By the way, I love that picture of the frost. Amazing how it shows up on the camera.
We bought some acorn from our local feed dealer. I raised butternut this year and now that we have had our first frost it is time to pick and put them up. I have never heard of sweet meat winter squash before.
Have you got squash!! All that did anything here was the spagetti squash but I’m glad I at least got some.
The frost is lovely, I want some!
Your sweet meat look different than the one’s we bought at our local farm stand. Our have warts on them more like these: http://www.seedsavers.org/Details.aspx?itemNo=973%28OG%29 but with the same color skin. Do you know if there is a difference? (and do you ever share seeds? hint hint
Photobby, ours never have the warts, and they don’t crack in storage either. Sorry, I don’t share seeds on the blog, because I get too many requests to satisfy everyone.
You might try Ed Hume Seeds, since they are in the PNW and would probably have the seeds that are acclimated to our climate. The one I grow is the original strain from Gill Brothers in Portland – I save the seed from the sweetest specimens that also keep fairly long – instead of just the seeds from the first squash we eat in the season. And to keep them true I don’t grow any other C. maxima squash at all. They are a great squash, no strings in the flesh, and not dry or too moist either. Perfect for pumpkin pie!
http://www.humeseeds.com/index.htm
Hi Nita,
What is the name of that blue squash? I grew one in New Zealand that self seeded out of the compost, saved the seeds and passed them around to all the neighbours because they all said it was the sweetest, best tasting they’d ever had (which is saying something because Kiwis eat a lot more squash than we do here in Canada). But, because it was a volunteer, I never knew what it was. It looked a lot like the one above. Certainly, the same color. I think it may have had less striations but I could just be remembering it wrong.
cheers,
Kristeva
HDR, this one is Sweet Meat from Portland, maybe you grew Queensland Blue, it is very similar. They all taste pretty similar really, and once they get acclimated they get even better!
Do you dry farm your winter squash?
Ben, yes, unless we get one of the 100 degree weeks. There is quite a bit of dryland cucrbit acreage around here. Direct seed, and wide spacing and you’re good to go.
Great, thanks. I’m doing a 1/4 acre dry plot this coming year and am trying to decide what to grow, and the varieties…
Was also wondering if you can dry farm perennial or somewhat perennial things like asparagus or strawberries?
Ben, I would think perennials would be be even easier to dry land farm. Have you heard of the Nordells in PA? They do dry land market gardening and grow a variety of crops without irrigation including lettuce.
http://newfarm.rodaleinstitute.org/features/1204/nordell/index.shtml
Thanks, I have read some about their farm. Was thinking it may be harder for us since we have 3 months of no rain… But since asparagus and strawberries are spring harvested, it could be perfect.
Ben, Steve Solomon writes quite a bit about dryland gardening/farming too. Water-Wise Vegetables is a good one. Available through his Soil and Health link on my sidebar or through Abebooks for about $3.00. For me website reading is nice, but I like buying books. And if it is a used book all the better, the tree was already cut down. And everyone knows server farms are far from environmentally sensitive… .
I’ve read several of his. Love it. Is that the small book that’s more like an extended pamphlet?
Ben, yes, it’s a good one, very pertinent to our dry summers. And describes in great detail how all the subsistence gardeners I knew as a child gardened.