Our winter squash didn’t do well last summer because of the dry weather. This year we’ve had ample rain but we’ve made some mistakes and our harvest will likely be lacking again.
We planted several different types of winter squash in the big garden. We’ve never done that before and definitely did not pick out a good place to plant them.
The area we chose is close to a wet weather spring. This year’s abundant rain has had the spring working overtime. The plants never got washed away, but they came awful close to it. I believe it was just too damp for them to do any good there.
Knowing the first ones we planted weren’t thriving we planted more up at our house where we knew they would do better, and they have. The only problem is we didn’t plant them till up in June and I’m worried they may not have time to fully mature.
Another problem we’ve just fully realized is the green and white striped cushaw seeds we planted are a different variety than we are used to. The squash is much much bigger. One of them probably ways close to 20 pounds already! And the shape is different too. Even the color is different.
You can see one of them in the photo at the top of this post.
The picture on the front of the seed packet looks like what we usually grow, but the squash produced by the seeds is definitely different at least in looks.
We’ve never had any with yellow on them and the neck is usually much thinner than the rest of the squash. The ones we’ve grown in the past have a much longer body too.
The late planting of small sugar pumpkins has produced a few winter squash and there’s a butternut near them that I don’t even remember planting.
And then there’s the volunteer winter squash we have growing out in the backyard. They are varying sizes, but all on the smaller size. The plant has pretty much died back and most of the squash are still very green.
Well writing about our winter squash has made me feel better. Hopefully we’ll at least get a few 🙂
Last night’s video: The Best Peach Bars.
Tipper
Subscribe for FREE and get a daily dose of Appalachia in your inbox
Hello, Tipper, Matt and Girls! This is my first time writing in. I find the blog and Youtube channels so relaxing. I watch Celebrating Appalachia, thepressleygirls, and blindpigandtheacorn. Paul is so talented and your mom is a treasure. I just love her singing voice and sweet spirit. I grew up in lush summer kitchen gardens in Pennsylvania! Maybe they planted due to necessity, but they all seemed to enjoy gardening. My job was to look for beetles that could hurt the crops. I rarely had to go inside for a snack because I was allowed to eat from their gardens anything ripe. My parents, and both sets of grandparents always had lush gardens and I grew up helping them put up the harvest. Unfortunately, I do not have a green thumb at all. I teach middle school and high school math in Newport News, Virginia now. My heart longs to sit on a porch after working in the garden, though. I usually put one of my students in charge of my classroom plants (they cleanse the air). Also, in the morning, I usually have one of your Youtube channels playing in my classroom before the bell rings and my students all are fascinated and at peace seeing a different lifestyle. I think you are a wonderful historian, Tipper. Matt, I sure miss hunting with my Daddy and I also miss eating my Daddy’s delicious venison. I never liked it cooked by anyone else. Girls, keep sharing God’s Word and how it applies to your lives. You all take care and I’m praying for you!
The cushaw pumpkin pictured in your post, is the same color as the one I grew last year. The first one I picked weighed 17 + lbs. I got my seeds from a person on the backyard chickens site. I wish I could have had some this year to. It’s been a really bad year for gardeners everywhere.
We call it “wonky weather”. First there’s a lot of rain. Then there’s unbearable heat. Now a cooler spell. Then a couple days of fierce storms. Now it’s hotter and muggier than Florida which makes for fungus and other plant problems. Then I get the message we might be getting more snow this year. I’m of the mind that some years we can try and say a lot of prayers and just keep trying.
Tipper, both the blind pigs (like me) and the acorns (everyone else) need a forum. Today’s posts show this. We find it difficult to follow threads across multiple days. It requires remembering what day a topic appeared (increasingly difficult as I age), then finding it in a chronological, uncategorized group order.
I’m curious if I’m alone in this wish. FWIW, it’s not difficult to set up a forum. Simple Machines Forum (SMF) is free software. Forums DO require a place to put them on the web (you have that) and someone to moderate them (which you do here before posting comments).
Please! SOMEONE STOP ME! I’m about to volunteer to help create a BP&A forum if Tipper’s amenable an others would participate.
Robert, my plate is so full it’s falling off the edges 🙂 So I couldn’t manage a forum nor even participate in setting one up. I’m sorry the blog set up isn’t conducive to forum like threads.
If you ever find a ROUN TUIT and want to investigate a forum, let me know. I’ll do what I can to help.
It seems pretty much everyone who gardens are having a crazy and challenging time this year – more so than in prior years. My daughter in Oregon says her garden us not doing as well this year either. But it also has been a crazy weather year which affects how our gardens grow! That squash looks pretty Tipper, even if it is a hybrid, crossed with something else. May it still be tasty and you all will enjoy whatever you make from it. Looking forward to when you decide to make use of it and what you end up with.
Another wonderful day is upon us. Today thousands of us in the Milwaukee WI area have to look forward to cleaning and drying out our basements,and replacing thousands of dollars of ruined utilities. Some even have ruined homes. It’s unfortunate that people turn their basements into real living space on the assumption they are safe. Fortunately I only use my basement for storage, and what I’ve lost, due largely to a failed sump pump, is not important. I’m grateful that my 6.5 hours of bailing the sump pump saved the furnace, water heater and freezer from damage. I suffered greatly the day after, but with no permanent damage to these 77 year old parts. I tell myself that all this is going to help greatly when I move to another location.
What keeps my spirits up is my garden. I look at that ginormous winter squash plant that took root in the compost pile and the 8 large squashes hanging on, and I’m grateful. The other point of gratitude is the tip I found on YT about sprinkling cayenne pepper onto my brassicas to prevent the cabbage moths from taking over. I see about 10 moths fluttering about. but not landing on my plants. The dill is abundant this year, and the potatoes I planted in large old wash tubs did well despite the squirrels digging some of them up and gnawing on them. I got a nice harvest of them albeit their small size. I was able to find a nice patch of ground where I planted 18 more potatoes and they will be harvested in about month in their full size. So after doing some morning chores, I’ll head back to the basement to bag and haul “stuff “. Wish me luck! Blessings to all BP&A fans.
Catherine, I’m so sorry for the flooding.
Prayers..
This has been the worst year for gardening I have ever experienced. First, it was the nonstop rain that led to a late planting, then the never-ending heat cooked the vegetables on the vine. I don’t even want to get started about the deer and groundhogs that have fattened themselves while eating everything in sight. It was my first year growing Candy Roasters. I planted them close to the house so the dog and I could keep an eye on the truckload of beauties. Every single one of them disappeared overnight. Mom planted cushaws every year, dried square pieces on a hanging string, and they tasted like the candied fruit we can buy nowadays. We have not had a drop of rain in weeks, and now the weatherman is predicting the next five days will be the hottest we have had this year.
Same with me for the last few years, deer eat everything but my tomatoes, and the hot dry weather takes care of them. I told my son I think I am done with trying to have a garden. This year, I have bought local grown Blue Lake green beans for $3 lb and okree for $2 lb along with other things. I will keep trying to grow a few tomatoes , but think I am done with everything else. Now because of my health (arthritis knees), cost of seed and fertilizer, weather and especially DEER it no longer makes sense for me to try to grow my own.
Tipper and and Tricia, I am sorry (lowdown too) but I don’t see a reply on my end unless y’all are referring to Tricia’s comment at 8:42 about the price of school lunches. I know I wrote about the price of lunches at my schools being similar and how good I thought they were. I will try looking some more. My saying “lowdown too” I would always tease my wife and tell folks that is what she would say whenever I told her I was sorry.
Tipper, that looks like a orange cushaw that should be more orange than green and I had a green and white this year that had a small neck on it, the longer I left my cushaws couple years ago the more orange they ended up being. I cut my 24 lb cushaw yesterday and saved all the seeds, I had to work it up because black crickets were eating it, I had it in the greenhouse trying to cure it, next up is the big banana squash and I’m saving the seeds from it, should be a lot of them from a 37 pound squash.
Curious to see how that mystery squash turns out. Sounds like something got cross pollinated somewhere along.
Weather has been so different every year since I started my little garden. No two years have been alike for us. So something different has thrived every year (thankfully) and sadly something different has failed each year. I wrote earlier that pur cabbages didn’t make much, but I was cleaning up a row of them I had given up on, and I found about twenty or so beautiful heads of cabbage deep in there that the bugs didn’t get. I was and am amazed and thankful. One thing about gardening, it’ll keep you humble! ❤️ I hope you get an unexpected bunch of great squash!
Tipper, if one measures SUCCESS by trying and effort and there’s a gorgeous 20 pound squash, I think that’s pretty awesome myself! What your squash has done is cross pollinate with another member of the squash family and your squash looks to have either pumpkin (my strongest guess) or butternut. You have a one of a kind Tipper squash and there’s NO OTHER in this world quite like yours because it’s unique! Gardening is a strange and unpredictable adventure at best. It can be crazy, bountiful and just plain fun. If we are outside in the dirt, sun and rain just breathing it all in and trying to find peace and joy, I’d call any gardener a winner in life!!!! I look at the blooms and growing bounty and somehow my heart finds the solace it desperately needs in this modern, God forsaken, got no time for anybody but me and my phone world…the garden-it’s a good place to be and have a talk with the good Lord!!! My garden looks better this year than it ever has and all I did was layer plant and group plants together. I put sunflowers and peppers together. I put 4 tomato plants together. I went around in a square and just kept layering stuff in. That’s my secret… plant so many together, you need rebar to hold em up!!! The neighbors minds will be blown watching your stuff WAYYYYYY bigger than the average with pounds of yield!!!! I’m the laziest gardener around!!!
It has definitely been a different year for my garden as well….but we have been blessed with a good harvest. We are so thankful for everything that we can use that keeps the grocery bills lower. Gardening sure keeps you guessing and surprises you every year!
My garden has not done well this year, I think it was all the rain, my tomatoes have all been late coming as have what peppers I’ve grown that even bore any fruit at all, short of the Sugar Rush Peach and Lemon Spice Japaleno, they have just outdone themselves this year. Last year, my tomatoes and peppers were ample in supply, the only difference being all the rain we got here in the Spring and Early Summer. I’m sure you will find a use for those big ole squash though
I planted two rows of pumpkins out behind my house this year, my husband was kind enough to till me up a patch (I say this with a wink, I have been known to plant pumpkin seeds in our shrubbery and flower beds and they run out into the yard and it makes it hard for him to mow and turns into a gommed up mess… think granny planting beans where they don’t belong)… so I was so excited to have the prettiest little pumpkin patch you ever saw! My plants came up beautifully, bloomed, and a few have fallen over and looked like they were going to run… but…. That’s where they stopped. Not a single plant produced. We had awful hot dry weather for a couple of weeks and for the last two it’s been torrential rain… they open up and bloom every morning and look so pretty… but not a single one produced any pumpkins. I don’t think the bees ever found them for pollination since they were in the back yard off by themselves. The hopes I had of watching my pumpkin patch come to life have faded into disappointment… I remind myself of what you always say… such is the life of a gardener, and I’m already thinking about what I can do differently next year for a better outcome.
Another sleepless night waiting on 4 o’clock and today’s BP&A. Nothing to do with squash, but after almost 2 months of hot, humid and dry weather the last couple of wet cloudy weeks and lower temperatures have been a pure joy. Unfortunately the hot, humid weather but not the dry has returned. Temperatures in the 90’s and very humid with the heat index in the upper 90’s. I keep telling myself only a few more weeks before fall, my favorite time of the year.
Tricia, I could not find your reply comment to me. Ron,I wrote a reply to your comment yesterday about school, poor parenting and the Bible but it didn’t get posted. It was “Amen,” I couldn’t agree more with you.
Randy, you might want to look again it is there at least on my side.
Randy, the comment is there. I was talking
about the school lunches and my husbands school in the next town didn’t have them. They had to carry their lunches the entire twelve years of his schooling.