2017 Winter Squash Report

I’m a huge fan of the whole Cucurbitae family, but particularly squash. I love their savoury-sweet flavour – especially chopped into chunks, oiled, seasoned and baked in the oven until the edges start to caramelise nicely – but also the longevity of the fruits; picked at the right time, well-cured and properly stored they can last right through the coldest months of winter and into early spring.

But I have confession to make: this year I took my eye off the ball at the crucial time (July into August) and let the plants grow and ramble far more than I intended. The result was – rather predictably – far too much foliage and far fewer fruits than I was hoping for. As a result, we’ll be lucky if we get half a dozen good squashes this year, and at least three of those are overgrown courgettes.

But hey, next year will be better – I’ll have more time to keep on top of the plot, seeing as I’ll have finished the hard landscaping in our back garden that’s kept me so busy through the summer – and the harvest will be mighty.

In the meantime, here are a few pics of the squash / pumpkin / overgrown courgette fruits that we’ll hopefully to be able to enjoy eating later in the year.

Squash / Pumpkin

One of the new varieties I tried to grow this year is ‘Ukichi Kuri’, a compact Japanese squash. We have one decent fruit developing at the moment:

Another new-to-me variety this year is the old French heirloom ‘Rouge Vif D’Etampes’, which means ‘bright red, of Etampes’, a town to the south-west of Paris. It still has some reddening to do, but is coming along nicely:

Last year one of our allotment friends gave us a ‘Crown Prince’ squash in exchange for one of our ‘Turk’s Turban’. It was delicious, and even though it’s an F1 variety – which never come true to type if you grow from their seed – I thought I’d give a second generation a go. This is the most promising of the two fruits that have come from the saved seed:

And this is the other, not quite so promising-looking specimen:

We’ll see how they turn out. You never know, they might be absolutely delicious.

Finally, this variety of squash is called ‘blue banana’:

So far, not very blue – more of a mucky dark green – and not very banana-like. But again, the proof is in the eating, so we’ll see how that one turns out.

Overgrown Courgettes

The ‘Zephyr’ courgettes that we tried earlier in the season were very tasty, and quite unusual with their two-town green and yellow bisected colouring. It looks like they develop into some sort of crookneck squash if left on the plant long enough to mature:

We’ve also got a smallish marrow that we’ve grown from courgette ‘Midnight F1’ and a gem squash from a courgette ‘Tondo di Piacenza’, already curing in the greenhouse.

That’s it for this year. Not quite the haul we were hoping for. But as I said, next year will be much, much better. I plan to nick Monty’s idea for growing smaller squash up stout poles (in our case, Jo suggested using three bamboo canes lashed together for each ‘pole’, which I reckon is a good idea) and also set up a couple of larger manure mounds for the more rambly, ground-hogging varieties.