Monday, October 14, 2013

Winter squash

I mentioned yesterday, I harvested all the winter squash in this year's garden. Ken brought a pack of mixed squash seeds back from his trip to the US last spring. The varieties in the pack were delicata, buttercup, butternut, and spaghetti. I had no idea what varieties would come up when I planted them.

Our squash crop, minus one, for 2013.

It turns out that we got some of each. The spaghetti squash were the most represented with ten squash, followed by the buttercup with five. We only got one butternut plant which produced two fruits, one of them a little small. Then we got three very large oblong green squash that don't look anything like the pictures on the packet. They might be delicata, but they don't look like they're supposed to.

Spaghetti (yellow ovals), buttercup (green rounds, bottom), butternut (pear shaped on left), and the big dark green not-quite-delicata (top of photo, under the others).

Whatever they are, I'm sure they'll be good. We've already had one of the buttercups and it was quite tasty with a dense orange flesh that resembles butternut, but is not as sweet. It has a chestnut flavor. We cooked a spaghetti squash for lunch yesterday and it was delicious. We'll be eating a lot of squash for the next few weeks. I'll also be preserving some of it by roasting and freezing the flesh. That will be good for breads, pies, and soups during the winter (just like pumpkin).

7 comments:

  1. Walt, your dark green squash look like a Kabocha type...
    we grew them once in Leeds...
    I don't think they liked the climate as the fruits were smaller than they should have been...
    and the flesh was pale yellow.
    These look much bigger... more like the description.
    Our seed came from Italy....
    from stock used to a much more clement climate than Leeds...
    I'll be interested to see what you find on cutting it open.

    Info for you and Ken... your spag squash is one of the end to end type...
    looking at the cooked flesh, I think it looks fine...
    they are NOT very spaggy like... just a different texture to most squashes.
    And like spag, they are more of a flavour carrier than most...
    Kens additions sounded very nice.

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  2. Wow, I had missed on Ken's blog that these were squash that you had grown-- I was focused on the yummy-looking edible insides. Congrats, Farmer Fellas!

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  3. What a beautiful crop! The Kabocha is my favorite, but I really enjoy all the winter squash. I'm a little confused by Tim's comment about the spaghetti squash being the end to end type. We only get one sort here and the flesh is spaghetti like when cooked. I'll have to look that up. Your garden is wonderful.

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  4. Kristi,
    Pauline and I have only grown spaghetti squash twice....
    the first was a yellow skinned variety like Ken and Walt's...
    strings running lengthways...
    full of flavour, too!
    The second was a variety called "Pyjamas"... green and white stripes...
    flavour was bland... and the strings ran round the squash, not end to end.
    We got better spaghetti by cutting the last two across to remove the seeds....
    mind you that was easier than cutting it lengthways!!
    So I expect Pyjamas is a different squash group than ordinary spagsquash!!

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  5. Incroyables, ces courges en forme de roue...

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  6. tim, the spaghetti squash was delish, even if the strands were a bit short. Still, very tasty.

    judy, I love to grow winter squash and pumpkins. They're easy and tasty!

    kristi, thanks! Winter squash are very satisfying.

    olivier, très curieux, eh ? Mais délicieux. Ce sont proches des potimarrons en saveur.

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  7. That's a good amount of squash. Lots of good eating in the future.

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