MAINE-LY GARDENING: What’s in the garden? Winter squash

by Jude Hsiang

Winter squashes, like the butternut and acorn varieties are members of the cucurbit, or gourd family, like cucumbers and zucchini. The family has almost one thousand species including edible plants like melons. Ornamental gourds and loofah “sponges” sponges are some of the others. Humans have been cultivating and developing new types for thousands of years all over the world’s temperate and tropical regions.

We harvest summer squashes and zucchini when they are young and tender, but the winter squashes are allowed to mature on the vine and can be stored for months. From Thanksgiving through the winter months, squash dishes are a regular part of our diet.

Squash is among the easiest plants to grow with big seeds that the littlest fingers can handle. Seeds of many quashes can be roasted or can be saved to plant next year,

There are so many winter squashes to choose from – various sizes, shapes, and colors – and new ones seem to pop up in seed catalogs or the grocery shelves every year. This is because they cross-pollinate very easily. If you’ve grown different varieties close to each other, you’ve probably gotten some unexpected oddities in your garden.

Horticulturists note the seeds from cross-pollinated squash can contain a toxin that could make you sick, so it’s wise to save seeds only from the squash that look like the ones you expected to see when you planted them.

Although squashes are easy to plant, they do have a couple of common pests. One of the most frustrating for the gardener is the squash vine borer which is the larva of a moth. These insects bore into the base of the plant and eat through the stem for several weeks before crawling out and burrowing in the soil to pupate. Suddenly a beautiful, productive plant will shrivel and die as it can no longer get water from the roots. Another pest insect is the squash bug which feeds on the upper parts of the plants.

Help with these pests is part of Integrated Pest Management, a system of low impact measures used to fight pests and diseases with few or now pesticides. Trap cropping is a way of protecting desirable plants by introducing another plant that is more attractive to the pest. The method works especially well with squash and cucumber, too.

The large Blue Hubbard squash has been found to be the favorite of squash pests. Farmers start these plants early in the green house and plant them outside when they plant the seeds of their main cash crop. As the Blue Hubbard plants grow, the insects arrive to feed on them, leaving the other squashes alone. The insects can be picked off or killed with a limited amount of pesticide, leaving the other squashes for harvest. Only six ro eight Blue Hubbards will protect one hundred main crop squash plants. While farmers generally use this technique, it would be interesting to plant a couple of Blue Hubbard squash in a backyard garden, keeping in mind they have to be started a couple weeks earlier in order to be mature enough to trap the bad guys.

Trap cropping is one of the ways to reduce the use of pesticides and labor in agriculture. There are a number of other methods of Integrated Pest Management that have been discovered by scientists and other observant gardeners. Something to think about as we watch our squash grow.

© Judith Chute Hsiang
Jude Hsiang is a retired Extension Master Gardener instructor and member of the China Community Garden.