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I have no idea what temperature the basement is here. I know that walking up the stairs it feels like there’s a wall of heat, so probably in the 60-ish range, possibly upper 50’s?

The “Bigger Better Butternut” was given to me by someone on the Permies.com forum. The variety was originally developed by Carol Deppe, but she introduced it at about the same time she stopped filling orders! The only people who were able to get hold of the seeds were the few who had managed to buy them during an in-person appearance at a gardening conference. Fortunately, one of them had a big enough crop that she was willing to share the seeds. Last year was the first year I grew them, and I’ve been impressed. They produced well under less-than-ideal conditions, keep well without special treatment, and the flavor is excellent.

“Great Lakes Shark Fin” is actually sold by greatlakesstapleseeds.com under the name “Pastella”, but since “Pastella” is really just the generic name for C. ficifolia, also known as “Shark Fin Squash”, I decided to give it a more specific variety name. Shark Fin Squash are hard to find in the US, and then last year I suddenly found two sources at the same time. I ordered seeds from both, but when the seeds arrived it was obvious that they were different enough that they needed to be treated as different varieties. The ones from the other source died shortly after sprouting, while the ones from Great Lakes were strong and vigorous, so that was the variety I decided to keep as a regular.

Shark Fin squash are unlike any squash I’ve ever encountered before. The fruits are as un-squash-like as they could get. From the outside, they actually look more like watermelons. If you take a ripe one and try to slice it open, you’ll encounter the first unexpected trait: those shells are like freaking granite! And they do NOT soften after cooking, in fact I’m pretty sure they get harder. (I suspect the shell could be used as a cooking vessel if you needed one, and would hold up better than gourd vessels do.) If you only eat one once in a great while, you can use a wood saw to get through, the shell is less than 1/4 inch thick. If you decide to grow a lot, you may want to invest in a stainless steel bone saw, the kind used by surgeons. You can get those on Amazon for fairly cheap.

They can also be used as a summer squash, and are easier to cut open then, but won’t have as long a shelf life.

After cutting it open, you’ll see the second odd trait. There is no hollow seed cavity inside. Instead, the seeds are interspersed with the meat, which runs solidly through the whole fruit, and looks a lot like a white-fleshed watermelon.

When you scoop some of that flesh out, you’ll find it falls naturally into strings, much like a spaghetti squash does. If cooked, those strands supposedly look and taste like shredded shark fin in a shark fin soup. (Hence, the name.) Personally, I’ve never eaten an actual shark’s fin, so I have no frame of reference for it. I think the cooked squash looks like rice noodles. The texture is firmer than rice noodles, and the taste tends to reflect how it was prepared, so it goes well in a lot of recipes. My Mom likes using this squash in her omelets every morning.

If you decide to try this squash raw instead of cooked, you’ll find it mildly sweet, with a pleasant crunch. Again, like it’s trying to be a watermelon but didn’t know how.

I’m told the seeds from a shark fin squash can be ground up and used in their own recipes, but I have no experience or recipes to share for that.

The one downside I’ve noticed with growing shark fin is that it can be day-length sensitive. If you have other squash that were planted at the same time that are flowering, but this one isn’t, there are ways to encourage it to bloom. The easiest is to take a single leaf per plant, and bend the leafstalk just enough to bruise it. This signals the plant that it might be in danger, and kicks the flowering process into gear.
(I’m hoping to test this on other day-length sensitive species, but that research is on the “some day” list.)

“Calabasas de las Aguas” is a C. mixta squash, from Native Seeds Search. This one was not labelled as being a good keeper, but I was pleasantly surprised to find it holds up as well as the others. It’s not as sweet as most squash I grow, but it’s not as bland as the other C. mixtas I’ve tried.

Be aware that this one is a climber. I have photos of it taking over a bean trellis. It also has been a shy seed-producer, at least for me. Of the fruits I’ve cut open, one had no seeds, and 2 only had one seed each! Yet the fruits were full-sized and nicely round, which means there’s a chance this one can fruit without pollination. More testing needed in that regard.

This one has historical value. It was originally developed by the Tarahumara tribe in what is now Mexico. The name comes from the fact that planting was timed to coincide with the rainy season.

There was another Carol Deppe variety I grew that might have kept just as long, but I only had a few fruits of that kind, and I wanted to get at the seeds. That was the “Sweet Meat - Oregon Homestead” variety. Ms. Deppe had noticed that the “Sweet Meat” squash that’s widely available was nothing at all like it had been when she was a child, so she set out to reclaim the variety she remembered. The “Sweet Meat-OH” had the thickest walls I have ever seen on a squash before. One squash the size of a basketball, had a seed cavity the size of a golf ball! This makes it harder to produce large quantities of seed, but easier to produce large quantities of food.

This turned out way longer than I thought it would be! I’d better stop here.