Another Squash Update

Yeah, I know it's kind of obnoxious to keep posting pics of baby squash, but I have a little squash obsession and I think it's only fair to share it with you.   Some people show off pics of their kids and dogs, I show off pics of my squash.   It's a crazy world.

Also, excuse all the hands in the pics.  Not super attractive, but I wanted to give you an idea of how big they are getting.

This is Australian Butter Squash.   Sort of chunky and exactly the color of butter. This is our first time growing this one.  I can't wait to see how big it gets and what it tastes like. 

This one is Honeyboat Delicata.  It's pretty prolific.  I've got at least six fruit right now and they set pretty early.  They're a little longer than my hand.  I think they're supposed to turn more coppery when they're ready to harvest, so I'm waiting.  

This is Black Futsu.   I tried it last year and it finally set fruit in late September.  They were adorable and tiny but too late to ripen.   I decided to try again this year.   You can see how big this one is getting.   It'll have an orange area when it's ready.

This one is a summer squash - Golden Marbre Pattypan.   I love the stripes.   These get a bit bigger than my palm and dark yellow when they're ready.

And this one is a Musquee de Provence.  You can see how big it is already and it's just getting bigger.   I have two more big ones like this one.

The little white things are some volunteer baby white pumpkins.  We keep throwing the remains in with the chickens and every year we get more of them as volunteers from the chicken dirt we amend the garden with.  

Squash Update

So the truth is that I'm kind of in love with squash plants.  I love the way the bees buzz all over them.  I love the flowers, I love the fruit, I love the vines.  They crawl all over the garden and we have to leap frog over a lot of them but I don't care.   They make me happy.

This is winter squash Black Futsu with yesterday's flower, today's flower and tomorrow's from right to left.   It made me laugh. 

This is a baby Queensland Blue [left] and a baby Golden Hubbard [right].   They're a bit bigger than your fist in this pic, but they'll get a LOT bigger before they're done.   The QB will turn a lovely blue gray and the GH will turn a screaming traffic cone orange when they're ripe. 

And as always, I let a couple of  volunteer mystery squash stay this year.   This one is nice and smooth and regular and pretty pale.   Maybe another batch of the little white pumpkins that seem to volunteer so well in the chicken dirt?    I hope so - they make adorable decorations. 

2012 Veg Garden Wrap-Up

Here's a wrap up of the 2012 veg garden production.

Notes:  Seeds come from BC=Baker Creek Heirloom Seeds, unless indicated.  I've listed the exact variety of each plant, where I knew it.  There are some that I've lost or never knew.  I tried saving some of my own seed last year and I've noted which of our own seeds we used this year.  

Beans 

• Red Chinese long beans [our saved seed from 2011] Excellent germination.   I love these beans!   We'll always do these.
• Green Chinese long bean.   These don't like heat.   Did fabulously once the weather cooled late summer and were frost resistant for the first few light frosts.   Definitely a keeper.
• Dragon Tongue [our saved seed from 2011]  Excellent germination.  First beans June 30.
• Blue Lake [our saved seed from 2011]  Excellent germination.

Broccoli:  4 pack from Menard's.   Cabbage worms got them.  Good production, but covered with worms.  Pulled them up and tossed them.

Cabbage:  4 pack from Menard's.  Cabbage worms got them.  Pulled them up.

Carrots:  St Valery.    I grew carrots!    Woo-hoo!     Unfortunately, they were woody and didn't taste very good because of our soil.  No one would eat them.  I won't be doing carrots again.  

Collards:  4 pack from Menard's.  Cabbage worms got them.  Pulled them up.

Cucumber

• Telegraph:   My favorite, smooth skin and long.   Great cukes!   Will do these again.  
• de Bourbonne [tiny ones].  First cuke July 1.   Pick tiny.   Delicious and extremely prolific!  Will do these again. 

Eggplant

• Japanese Pickling [good success 2011]  Very heat tolerant!  These are my favorite.   Will do these again. 
• Rosa Bianca [round, rose pink]  These don't tolerate the very high heat [100 +] that we had.  Water frequently.   Didn't produce much for me, right next to the Japanese Pickling eggplant.   Won't do these again.  

Fennel:  Di Firenze.  I planted these in the middle of the summer and babied them until the heat broke.   They're in the coldframe now and going gangbusters.   Will probably have fennel gratin for Christmas.   YAY!    Will start another batch in the coldframe in January.


Garlic:   Forgot about it.   I planted some in the spring and then just left it all year.    Try to plant this IN THE FALL.    I've planted a bunch from some random garlic from the store.   Came up and is still green.   Hopefully, we'll have a nice harvest next spring.


Greens:   Siamese Dragon Mix from BC.    Great producer in the coldframe all winter long.   Our favorite greens mix. 

Herbs, Annual:

• Basil, dark purple opal. Water seeds daily until they sprout.   Likes fertile soil.  
• Basil, italian.  Water seeds daily until they sprout.   I like the large leaf varieties.    Pick often [Cut just above a pair of leaves].   They'll produce like crazy.    Pinch off flowers. 
• Cilantro, Slo Bolt [our saved seed from 2011, original seed from BC]  Great germination.   I still have it coming up in the cold frame and warm pockets of the raised beds!

Herbs, Perennial [planted several years ago]

• Lavender
• Thyme
• Sage
• Horehound [self sows]
• Chives [self sows]
• Garlic Chives [self sows]
• Anise Hyssop
• Hyssop
• Chamomile [self sows]
• Alpine Strawberries
• Clary Sage [self sows]
• Winter savory
• Lemon balm [self sows]
• Sorrel

Kale :  Ragged Jack?     Planted it in the coldframe last year where it came up then sat at 1 1/2 inches tall for weeks.   Got aphids.   Transplanted outside in Feb and it really took off.  Delicious!

Melon

• watermelon Crimson Sweet.  Seed from Menard's - I got a couple small ones. Enough for K2.   
• muskmelon Kansas.   Unhappy where it's planted.  One leaf.  Produced nothing. 
• muskmelon Sweet Passion:  good success 2011, not so much 2012.  Only got a couple.  Didn't like where it was planted.  

Okra:  Red okra [our saved seed from 2011] Poor germination.  Only 4 sprouted.   When we've bought fresh seed from BC, this was an excellent bearer!

Onions

• 1 bag sets yellow.  Ready to harvest,  July 1
• 1 bag sets red.   From May's.  Ready to harvest, July 1.
• Egyptian walking onions - going like crazy now. 
  

Peas

• Sugar Snap:   Hardy and prolific.  Slightly better than the Mammoth.  Heat tolerant.    Finished June 24.
• Mammoth Melting Sugar:  Hardy and prolific.   Finished June 24.

Peppers

• Pepperoncini - Good bearer!  Hotter than we like.
• Orange Bell - Good!
• Lipstick - Great producer!    Not very fleshy.
• Anaheim - Great producer!  Long, gorgeous, not very meaty.  

Potatoes:  Kennebec.   From May's.    Had poor success with the potato towers.   Will plant them differently next year.  

Radish:

• Rat's Tail.  Delicious!!  Fun, very prolific.  Heat tolerant.  Fruit [green seed pod] is delicious fresh and dries well to use  in soups all winter.  Self sows.  
• Early Scarlet Globe:   Plant 3 or so inches apart. [I'm talking to you, Robin!]   Great radishes if they're not crowded. 

Sweet potatoes:  Georgia Jet.  From Bloomingfoods.  Great yield.

Squash, Summer  [vulnerable to vine borers here in southern Indiana.]

• Zucchino Rampicante:   Terrific squash!   We left ours until they turned tan.  Delicious!
• Golden Marbre Scallop [pattypan]:  My favorite scalloped pattypan.
• Lemon Squash:   Better than crookneck in my opinion.   Delicious!  
• Castata Romanesco [zucch type]:  Early set of fruit. Light.  Striped.  First one, June 30.   Best zuch we've had here.   Still vulnerable to vine borers, but produced nice squash anyway.  

Squash, Winter

• Baby blue hubbard [try again, BC seed from 2011]:  Didn't come up.
• Golden hubbard:   Good producer!   Delicious squash. 
• Omaha pumpkin [smallish, enlongated]:   Bad seed.  
• butternut Rogosa Violina Gioia:  Never produced.
• Queensland Blue:   Long vines!   Great squash.
• Greek Sweet Red [BC seed from 2011 to try again]:   Very prolific.  Seemed to really take off once the weather cooled off.    Delicious!  One of my favorites.
• Black Futsu [BC seed from 2011 to try again]:  Came up late.   At the very END of the season, started producing cute little squash.   I'm going to try these again 2013. 
• Choctaw Sweet Potato squash  [BC seed from 2011 to try again]:  Didn't come up.

Squash/Melon, Volunteer [These guys showed up and I decided to leave them.  Had no idea what they were until they set fruit.]

• Little white scalloped pumpkin.  Cute!
• Regular round white pumpkin.  Smallish.  Cute!
• Butternut squash:   Got a bunch of nice ones.  
• Mystery winter squash/gourd:  Striped with a few warts.  Turned tan with green spotted stripes.   Weird, but fun.   Not edible.
• Cantaloupe:   Got a little one.

Strawberries

• June bearing [from May's]:   Great producers!
• Ever bearing  [from May's]:   Great producers!

Tomato

• Red Zebra:  set fruit very quickly.  Smaller tomatoes.   Delicious. 
• North Dakota Earliana:   Good.
• Beauty King: set fruit early.   Good. 
• Principe Borghese [grape]: slow to set fruit, but then they took off.   Hundreds of tomatoes until frost.
• Amish Paste: These set fruit first.  Nice meaty tomato that looks like a large roma.   One of our favorites. 
• Pontano Romanesco:   It grew.   Nothing special here this year. 
• Volunteer Mystery Plant #1:  Set lots of fruit.  Irregularly shaped like Sioux from 2011.
• Volunteer Mystery Plant #2:  Lots of fruit.  

Winter Squash Tasting

The real test of winter squash for me is how tasty it is.   I don't grow decorations, I grow food.

Turns out that two of the squash I planted were decorations.   Not tasty at all.

The first was the Omaha Pumpkin.  I got the seed from Baker Creek, but there must have been some cross pollination, because it didn't look right and it was more like spaghetti squash than pumpkin.   I don't care for spaghetti squash at all.

The flesh looks like this when baked.    Stringy.   Nasty.   I threw it to the chickens. 

The second was the warty stripey volunteer squash that came up.  

It had a hard shell that was very difficult to get into and the flesh looked like this.  Eric thought it might be a gourd.

Stringy.  Nasty.   Definitely a decoration.   I threw it to the chickens.  

Sooo.   I did get a few decorations after all.

I think the Faux Omahas will rot - the skins seem soft.   I'll pitch them somewhere where the seeds won't volunteer in the garden.

 I'll let the warty things dry out and see if they are indeed gourds.  If they are, then they'll just get harder and eventually dry out until you can hear the seeds shake around inside.   Then we can make birdhouses or such with them.  

We still have the butternuts to try and the Greek Sweet Reds and the rampicantes.   I have a good feeling about those.   I'll keep you updated. 

Volunteer Squash - Ripe

We throw all of our veg type kitchen scraps to the chickens, who eat them and churn them up into black gold for the garden.    Chicken dirt is a miracle.

But loaded in that chicken dirt are a lot of seeds and so we get some volunteers.   This year we got a lot of tomato volunteers and squash volunteers.    I kept four of the squash volunteers and this is what they finally turned into.

This is a regular old butternut squash.  The regular color, the regular size.   Easy to identify.  

And these started out as tiny white pumpkins - only as they aged they turned a creamy yellow.   Very pretty. 

And this is a beautiful little white pumpkin.  I started out with half a dozen, but they were really susceptible to rot and the rest of them rotted.   Darn.   They were really cute. 

Then there are these.    This warty thing is about the same size as the white pumpkin.  I got four of them.   They were distinctly striped on the plant, then the stripes disappeared and they turned beige.   After I harvested them and they sat for a while curing, the stripes came back.   Weird.   They grew in full sun and I'm curing them under a tree - maybe the sun vs. shade has something to do with it.   I hope they taste good because even though they're really kind of strange looking, I find them entirely enchanting.  

Winter Squash

Here is a selection of the winter squash I grew this year.    It's a wild and crazy bunch and there are still a few in the garden growing.    The Greek Sweet Red just won't slow down.   I have two more in the bed that keep getting bigger and bigger. alongside a few more Omaha pumpkins and another small golden hubbard.

This is what I can definitely say about winter squash.   They love the bees and they love a lot of chicken dirt.   This is the best year for winter squash that I've ever had. 

Here's what I grew:  

• The three screaming orange ones are Golden Hubbard
• Two tall on the far right and one tall on the far left are Greek Sweet Red
• Three skinny beige in the back and one on its side in the front are volunteer butternut.
• The big fluted blue grey thing on the left is a  Queensland Blue.  I only got the one.
• The shorter greenish warty pumpkiny things at the back are volunteers.
• The two yellow pumpkins at the right are supposed to be Omaha pumpkins, but that's not what they looked like last year.    
• The tiny white pumpkins are volunteers
• The single white pumpkin in front is a volunteer.   Very susceptible to rot.   That's the only one that didn't succumb.

 I'll be showing you close ups and giving some details of each kind in the next few days.  

Volunteer Squash #3 and #4

As I've told you before, I left a few volunteer squash in the gardens to see what they would grow up to be.    I had a tiny white pumpkin [which succumbed to the heat and a vine borer, I believe.]  and a bigger white pumpkin.

These are volunteers #3 and #4.

#3 is some sort of warty green pumpkin. 

#4 is some kind of butternut squash. 

Here is what a riper version of #3 looks like [next to the white pumpkin that volunteered.]

The green pumpkin is getting oranger and oranger.   I'm wondering if the green stripes will disappear completely.

I must say that I've had a lot of fun with the volunteer squash and I'm getting things that I probably wouldn't have planted.   I'll definitely be doing this again next year.   I just need to find more room.

Volunteer Squash #2

I was delighted to find that one of my volunteers was a mini white pumpkin.   It set a dozen or so fruit before the heat got to it and did it in.   The last set of 105 degree days fried the poor thing. 

We were able to get about a dozen of them before it died.   I can't wait to use these for fall decorating. 

Volunteer Squash #1

I kept four of the volunteer squash that popped up in the garden early this year.    They all grew out of the chicken coop dirt and since we throw all the kitchen veg scraps in there, I had no idea what kind of squash it might turn out to be.

This is one of them.  

It's a medium sized white pumpkin - a little smaller than the size of your head.

We bought a couple of them for Halloween two years ago and tossed the remnants to the chickens.

So far I have 4 pumpkins ripening and the vine is getting longer, so I might have more.