Our gardens are suffering some neglect as we’ve all been doing a lot of time on the road. After almost a week at the Garden Writers Conference in Oklahoma City, we came back to find several yellow summer squash a little past their best picking date, but still quite edible.
The red kuri and the huge sweet dumplings came from seed saved from store bought squash. The rest were from packaged seed. In addition to the winter squash shown in the picture, we have three decent sized Hubbards still growing in the garden along with a couple of Waltham butternuts, including one huge butternut that I hope will prove to be as good as it looks.
I’ve had my share of problems with squash. Squash vine borers and squash bugs have taken hours of my time in trying killing them and hilling up the vines damaged by borers so the weakened plants can re-root.
This year the squash was very low maintenance. We started it pretty late and put it in a north bed that had been fallow for a couple years. Luckily the warm fall allowed all the squash to mature despite the late start and we were rewarded with an extremely healthy and nearly pest free crop.
Winter squash stores nicely and is among the most healthful foods out there, so we can expect to be eating home grown fiber, vitamin A, and beta-carotene well into spring.