Wonderful description. Thank you! Do you have any pictures? The squash plant is so beautiful. This is just my 2nd year of vegetable gardening, and I’m very eager to learn. Thanks again.
I’ll see if I can get pics and someplace to post them this weekend. I’ll post pics of my Hmong Sticky Rice patch too. That smells just wonderful when the warm breeze blows. It smells like cooking jasmine rice.
I’m not sure if seminole pumpkin would be an appropriate squash for you as it’s kind of long season and likes a lot of heat units. I see you’re in Illinois?
My favorite squash overall isn’t actually an OP one. It’s a hybrid (boo hiss LOL). Rumbo. I get the seeds from Jungs. It’s a dessert squash. You don’t really need to put the cooked squash in a blender when you’re done. It’s almost like pumpkin jelly when it’s cooked. I usually cook it and scoop it out directly into my pancakes or casserole. No strings at all.
Another you might consider is a mixed variety I’ve had good luck with called ‘Tetsukabuto’. It’s a small squash that’s a mix of c. maxima and c. moschata. You’ll need to grow another of either of those varieties for pollination. I got those seeds from Pinetree seed but I think Kitazawa seeds has them too. I haven’t lost one of these (yet) to SVB’s either.
At the end of squash season there are usually unripe squash on the vine when our first frost is predicted. Hubby has taken some dogwire fencing, cut it into 5ft sections and bent those into a sort of flattened out ‘U’ shape. I put those over the (rooted along the vine) section of vine that has the unripe squash, sometimes 2 overlapping to get enough vine (4 or 5ft continuous vine if you can). On top of that I put plastic sheeting, or crop cover. That will extend your season enough depending on your frost dates to get those last squash ripe on the vine. They last so much longer and are more useful (for us anyways) for their intended winter squash purpose.