curing them with the bottoms up. they are much prettier and more pink on the sunny side.
this is my 1st haul. have 11 still growing. biggest is 23.8 lbs and 27in long. curing them with the bottoms up. they are much prettier and more pink on the sunny side.
curing them with the bottoms up. they are much prettier and more pink on the sunny side.
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from what Iāve read they keep 4-6 mo. if cured properly. ill leave them on my deck for a few weeks weather permitting.
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Our experience the green bit on the end turns towards black and the skin goes more of a golden colour when theyāre ready.
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mine still had a green stem but they were in ground for 110 days so i harvested them. they were planted mid-May in a gamble as last frosts here are mid June. the 11 i have left im going to leave until the stem turns brown or harvest just before a frost hits.
Vigorous growing winter squash is often excessively productive and space consuming, which I like because I can let them grow in the fenced portion of my fruit tree nursery (deer love squash leaves). All I have to do is pull them off of the trees and they help smother other weeds, such as bindweed. Most years I end up with much more squash than I can ever use and give lots away.
Cucumber beetles here make some winter squash varieties difficult to grow, but you said the vines readily root out, which is usually the feature of resistant varieties.
I have one more question, how does the flavor compare to other varieties- say Waltham butternut, which on good years also gets sugar sweet- and this is a good year in the northeast for winter squash. Also, it looks like Candy has an awful lot of seed cavity compared to butternut, which would make cleaning them a bit more of an effort, right?.
How much do they weigh, on average?
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i havent tried them yet as they have to cure for a month before eating. i grew the early butternuts last year and they were very good. the candy roasters averaged about 15-20lbs with 1 23lbs. it was dry here this year so i watered during dry spells so they should have plenty of sugar.
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Thanks, thatās all I need to know. I live alone with my wife and we tire of winter squash way before we can use that much of the fruit. Sounds great for growing food for a food bank. How do you intend to use it all?
ill give some to family and friends. they keep in a cool dark room for 6 months. what we dont use by then ill probably freeze as a puree for soups and such. the chickens will get any that start to rot.
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Very smooth texture and sweet, I expect the rest of the crop will improve with further ripening and curing!
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Makes me want to grow it!
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1 well fertilized vine will give you over 20 fruit but it needs a lot of room to sprawl. besides that it needs 0 care at least here.
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I tried to grow it 2 years in a row. Planted several hills, got 2 fruits, neither of which made it to full ripeness. Compared to Waltham butternut, Seminole Pumpkin, South Anna, Burgess Buttercup, etc. it was a ādogā, and a favorite of the squash bugs. Iād like to try it again, but I have enough winter squash varieties that I KNOW will perform here, that Iām probably not going to buy seed again.
surprising it didnāt do well for you considering its a southern heirloom squash. it loves being heavily fed. mine shares a 4 x12ā raised bed with 3 watermelon vines which despite being shorter day than this squash are still growing.
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when did you plant yours? i put mine in ground mid may.
Steve, my garden is about 1/2 acre, in what was one of the winter āsacrificeā paddocks, where we fed all hay, and the cows were there peeinā & poopinā for 5 months out of the year for 15+ years. soil tests show that K & P are very HIGH, so I rarely use any fertilizer, other than a little bit of urea. The winter squash & watermelons are planted in the bottom half of the plot, and often have to climb over the johnsongrass and pigweed that explode after the pre-emergence herbicide (Prowl H20) peters out. But they usually produce 100+ fruits.
so its the squash bugs that kill it then? luckily we dont have them here yet but only my 2nd year growing winter squash. before then i only grew zucchinis.
Around June 1st
i was reluctant to harvest mine as the stem was still green but they were 110 days in ground so i harvested. obviously if yours are ripe mine are definitely so. how many you get on a vine?
I havenāt counted, but surely not as many as yours!
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