We’ve Got Some Super Squash This Year

At this time of year, the greenhouse does double-duty as a giant drying-rack, first for the onions and garlic crop and then for runner and French beans. It’s also a great place to cure our winter squash harvest ready for storing, and this year we’re delighted that we’ve actually got a few squash to cure and store:

The weird and quite wonderful, knobbly-looking specimens are Cucurbita maxima ‘Turk’s turban’ and as you can see we ended up with seven good-sized fruits from our three-sisters patch. There were a few more that almost made it before the rot or the mice got them, but we’re happy with our seven; that’ll be plenty to keep us going a while(if I don’t get over-generous and start giving them away). I reckon they look like baking-squash to me, that rind will be a beggar to peel otherwise.

The three large, almost-round squash are mature Cucurbita pepo ‘Tondo di Piacenza’ (a.k.a. courgettes). An accidental discovery last year, when one last courgette matured into what a Twitter-correspondent from South Africa identified as a gem squash. So this year, I deliberately left one fruit on each Tondo plant to do its thing, and this is the result. If they’re as tasty as last year we’re in for a treat, especially once they’re steamed and then mashed with mountains of butter and black pepper. Yum.

We also have one rather small ‘spaghetti’ squash, a couple of courgettes-gone-to-marrows that we’re curing to see what happens, and a ‘tromboncino’ that isn’t going to win any prizes (more on that in another post) but will hopefully make a tasty meal or two. All in all, not bad at all, and we already have plans for boosting next year’s harvest…