Hey again, it's Jason from Fraser Valley Rose farm in just a real quick video tonight
I'm starting to take some squash
Out of my field because they're ripening and I wanted to answer the question that I'm getting the most these days
I may answer some other questions as well. But the main question is how do I tell that my squash is ripe?
When should I pick it and what about curing it?
So let me take you to the field to show you real quick how to tell
okay, so squash give you some clues as to how ripe they are like for instance color and
Hardness of the shell and also if you look at the stem on the end, you can tell something there
So obviously between these two the riper one is the one that's brighter yellow, but you can also tell if you press your thumbnail
Into this skin here quite firmly, you'll see how easily it makes a mark there. That's called the thumbnail test
And if I do the same thing on this one here pressing quite firmly
I just get a slight depression doesn't break the skin
second thing is of course the color and the third thing is if you look at this stem on the top here and you may
Be able to tell this better on a different variety
But you can see how lush and green
It still is it's quite fresh and green and wet whereas once they start ripening oftentimes
You'll see that stem become darker woodier drier. Let me show you one a different variety where you can see a little bit better
Okay, this is a fully ripe Galeaux d'Eysines I'm trying to pretend I can speak French and
You can see from here that first of all
It's got its mature color its firmness if I try doing the nail test on this one
I don't think I can even leave a mark or not much of one anyway
It's starting to show these things here
which are the the peanutty looking things here are called sugar warts and it's another indication that the
Squash has reached maturity. And the last one I want to show you is again going down to that
handle or the stem on the squash as you can see that it's gotten
Browner and drier and more blistered than a fresh one. Let me show you an immature specimen of this variety
Okay, super easy to tell the difference there now, isn't it
If you look at this immature squash of the same variety
If I do the nail test and just press my thumb, I poked through very easily there if you look at
That handle that stem. It's like
completely wet
Quite quite lush so you can see this is just an early stages of development still rapidly expanding very soft tissue
So that's nowhere near ripe
Okay, and this sign you won't be able to tell on all varieties?
But it is a neat trick on some of the darker skinned ones because it's hard to tell with dark skin
Variety whether it's ripe or not. So if you turn this one around
You can see that the spot where it was touching the ground
Still has a very pale color and it's starting to ripen. You can see the orange color
So it's sort of like the equivalent of what's happened to this one here, but in this case
you can only see it in a spot where was touching the ground so it's not useful on every variety but on a variety like
This it's a Hubbard style or at least in the Hubbard family
And also on acorn squash you can sometimes tell by that spot that's been against the ground
Alright, so I have a few different kinds of squash here and some of them last longer than others in storage
so spaghetti squash and this delicata squash
And the winter luxury squash you see here and some of the softer skinned
Quicker growing varieties are naturally a little bit moisture and will not store
Well past say about 90 days and maybe exceptions to this rule, but that's about the typical
Shelf length of those kinds of squash whereas things like butternuts this Galeaux d'Eysines I have here some of the Hubbard's
The longer lasting of long island cheese those ones can last six months in storage
Generally, no problem. But the way to get your best life out of these things is to give them an additional curing step
So the curing step is that out in the field covered by the foliage still attached to the plants
They can still have a lot of moisture around them. Even from the ground and from the foliage around them
so if you get them into a spot where they have good air circulation say up on a shelf a
shelf with some some wire mesh or something like that a warm place and
keep them there for a couple of weeks after harvest you'll get that excess moisture out from the skin of the squash and
They will last a lot longer in storage. I hope that answers some of your questions about squash tonight running out of daylight
So I better wrap it up, but you have any questions. Please try drop those below the video