good morning this is angela with parkrose permaculture enjoying another gorgeous sunny
day here in portland oregon we've had rain off and on and right now today i'm soaking up the
sunshine so i figured this is a time of year that i start to tackle my winter squash chores
and i thought i would just talk with you about growing winter squash show you how i plant them
and some of the tips and tricks for growing them especially here in the pacific northwest
i'm in zone 8b these are applicable to other zones as well but your timing may be a little
bit different where you are i know folks that are south of us have already been able to plant their
winter squash and here we're just getting them going so a couple of things to think about first
i have one quarter acre i can't think of a vegetable that i love more than my winter squash
and i wish i had five acres just to grow a bazillion kinds of winter squash now
i really love amy goldman's book the complete squash if folks ask me where do i start going
to research what varieties of winter squash will do well in my area will taste good are the kind
of color and usage and shape that i want i will always direct them to amy's book it is a beautiful
beautiful book excellent photos and really good information through that book i actually found
two of my favorite squash that i grow consistently every year
so i will link to that in the description by the way so in growing winter squash in
the pacific northwest and anywhere there are some problems or some um habits or tendencies
that the plants have and that other factors in your ecosystem have that play into cultivating
this plant again i have to cram in far fewer plants that i would want on my quarter acre
usually i end up having to buy winter squash we consume so much of it that i can't grow enough
i wish i could but i just can't but again i can support local farmers and buy from them
from what i can't squeeze in here winter squash make a fantastic storage crop that needs no
refrigeration so we are typically finishing up the last of our homegrown winter squash in february
and i have sprinkled throughout that time buying a few from the store when growing winter squash it's
important to research the kinds that keep for a short period of time like a delicata and the kinds
that will keep the entire winter or sometimes even a whole year like the hubbard squashes
so i have gone from growing 10 or 12 different kinds of squash which was just not
economically viable for me in terms of buying the seed every year and then not practical for me in
terms of hand pollinating to save the seeds if i didn't want to buy them and also a number of those
squashes that i grew were really pretty and really much more decorative and the flesh was stringy and
watery and not very flavorful so in the last 20 years of growing winter squash i have narrowed
down the varieties that i think are actually good for culinary use and i stick to those i i
rotate through about five or six kinds of squash but there's three i grow every single year i'm
gonna talk about those three in this video today so in growing winter squash you need to know that
winter squash have delicate roots and stems and they do not like to be transplanted they are very
prone to transplant shock and they are prone to uh croaking very quickly after transplanting so i
typically start most of mine directly sewn in the ground this is a hit or miss strategy where i live
squirrels crows rodents tend oh and blue jays tend to dig up the seeds and eat them
before they germinate the crows will sit on my um fence posts and watch me plant my pumpkins
i love corvids they're so intelligent but take on if they could just stop eating my
pumpkins that would be great so there are strategies for that you can net or cage
the areas where you planted them until they can germinate that will help with the bird problems
not not so much with the rat problems if you live in an urban area like i do in portland that has
a notorious rodent problem that's probably not going to help you once the seeds have germinated
they are excellent food for slugs and snails slugs love to take your pumpkins and just
mow them straight to the ground especially in cooler weather so
again for the larger predators you want to cage them cage the seeds for the slugs the way i deal
with that is start your squash later the problem folks have is they start them too early in the
year and miraculously despite cool soil temps squash really like 65 degree temperature of
the soil to germinate but miraculously some of them are adapted to do well in cooler climates
when it's cooler and more moist out you tend to have more slug predation so waiting and starting
your winter squash in late may and early june in the ground means that you will avoid some of the
slug problems that you might get otherwise now you can also start them in pots i do this as insurance
in case i have done a poor job of protecting my emerging pumpkins from predators so when i
start them in pots i want to be super careful when i transplant them when you transplant out
any of your annual veggies you want to be really careful with this stem in fact oh check out my
recent video on planting tomatoes where i talk about how you want to invert the pot and support
the young seedlings so you want to be doubly careful when you're dealing with pumpkins that
you don't gaunch the stems or the roots or it's good by pumpkin i'm going gonna go ahead and
plant some today and talk about my three favorite varieties these are my insurance pumpkins that i
am going to be starting here right here these are my insurance pumpkins i have a bunch of the ground
already and actually i've had some germinate despite the fact that it's been quite cool
uh i tend to start them in late may and then do another round in the ground in
early june first week or two of june and a percentage of those will do well i'm a big
advocate of the sheer total utter neglect method of gardening and farming but pumpkins don't do
well with sheer total utter neglect they need some help annual crops tend to need some help so what i
do instead is i shotgun it i do an early planting i do a late planting i do insurance in pots
and that like three-pronged method tends to get me a more than adequate squash crop for the size of
my plot it's not that i don't grow enough plants i max out on the space here even though i grow them
vertically i put in two cattle panel arches this year that will be growing well they currently have
runner beans growing up one half and they will be getting pumpkins up the other and i grow pumpkins
all up my fencing for my chicken run and i also grow them up my gummy berries i use anything i can
for a trellis so i can get more pumpkins in but i'm still limited so let's talk about the three
kinds of pumpkin that i think are excellent every year i plant them my criteria for growing pumpkins
are as follows is it tasty can i use it for the kinds of food that i enjoy cooking and
what is its keeping time span so all pump pumpkins have similar disease and pest issues
particularly powdery mildew you can check out my video on how to deal with powdery mildew on squash
it's a common problem here in the pacific northwest now as the squash ages toward the
end of the season in september they always get powdery mildew that is the plant communicating
to you that it is tired it is winding down it is opening itself up to being
susceptible to powdery mildew because it is reaching the end of its annual life cycle
don't treat then i only treat if i get powdery mildew early in the season late in the season it
is the way the plant is communicating to me i am starting to shut down my life cycle is concluding
so i go three kinds the first one um which i don't actually have here right now is delicata
and i uh don't have any because i started them a couple of days ago and i don't have any seeds left
i grant i grow my delicatas because while they are not a good keeper winter squash they are
very tasty roasted you can eat the skin the rind when you roast it you can eat the whole thing
they make fantastic soups and they are good for making a puree for cooking into other
things like bread i make a lot of bread so delicata i grow it for the culinary potential
and not for the storage potential it's the first squash i eat out of my pantry once
they are harvested and cured because i know they will not keep the second one that i grow i do have
and i actually didn't save seeds from it last year because i got kind of lazy and so i had to buy
some i bought them from fedco which is my favorite seed company and these are burgess buttercup
this is the best winter squash i have a video on burgess buttercups because i don't think
there is a better winter squash anywhere it is a fantastic dry flashed complex flavor
excellent texture squash that is family sized that you can use for one or two meals
and it keeps really well they keep for months and months i store them under my bed they like
room temperature on the floor where it's like a little bit cooler and they'll keep out of
the sunlight they'll keep for months and months and months gorgeous buttercup seriously y'all
i put it cubed in stews roasted puree pumpkin pie when you're looking for an excellent squash
you want not stringy and not watery and you want good flavor burgess buttercup has all
three of those characteristics keeps well and is not a ginormous squash you can't utilize well
can't go wrong with burgess buttercup so in planting it today
the seeds are fairly small because it is not a really big squash these smaller pots here i'm
going to grow three to a pot and i just want to push them down now much like beans when
your squash is germinating the force of the germination and the water absorbed by the
seed during that process and plants do move they just move so slowly we can't see the force of the
germination tends to push the seed up out of the soil and so you want to put it down at least one
inch into the soil i typically go more than that i go two knuckles so i take my seed two knuckles
and chopped one two knuckles and then i'm gonna water that in really well so that's
my burgess buttercup you might ask me angela are you gonna label these no i'm not because i
can tell all three of these squash delicata burgess and the next one from each other
at the seedling stage because they do look unique the next one is one that i
actually did save myself and um have been able to share with a few folks
this is oregon sweet meat now if you read carol depp's book the resilient gardener
great book i know lately i've been recommending a lot of books there are a lot of great
permaculture and resilient living books out there so i'll just keep recommending them
the resilient gardener is written by an oregonian and a lot of her stuff is highly relevant
she produced a variety called oregon sweet meat the sweet meat squash is a pale
rind squash with an orangey flesh it will keep a very very long time and just like the burgess it's
a very dry flushed and not stringy squash some folks may find it too large for an individual to
use however it makes very good pumpkin pumpkin puree and you can freeze the puree please don't
can it in a hot water bath canner pumpkin puree and pumpkin butter both need to be pressure canned
they are low acid high density foods and will grow botulism please don't hot water bath can them but
you can preserve the puree after you crack into the squash so okay when i say oregon sweet meat
this is not carol depp's variety i actually it's been hard to uh source every year i tried to buy
uh oregon sweet meat uh seeds from her which she sold online they were always sold out so what i
started doing myself is i bought regular sweet meat seeds and i started hand pollinating with
a paint brush and then using a twist tie and tying the blossom closed so that i knew that the seeds
that grew up from that would be pure and come true to the variety and then i saved the seeds
and then over time i kept selecting the ones that did the best in my climate even when it
was rainy i picked the ones that were less susceptible to powdery mildew the ones that
had the best flavor and i kept saving those so i have angela's oregon sweet meat here
it is adapted to my micro climate adapted to my property here and does very well here ideally
you would want to do the same thing where you are adapt your seeds by selecting yourself and getting
ones that are site-specific permaculture loves to be site-specific site-specific and will do
the best on your property you've picked the best of the best and you've saved the seeds from them
so i've got my oregon sweet meat same thing i'm going to push them in two knuckles
and in these larger one-gallon pots i plant five okay
so i'm going to grow these out in the pots and then i will carefully
transplant them into the garden if i have holes from where i planted some
uh directly into the ground because predation or cool soil temperatures meant that i didn't get
as many seedlings germinating in the ground as i wanted these are my insurance pumpkins
so those are my tips for growing and starting winter squash the three best varieties
oregon sweet meat angela's oregon sweet meat burgess buttercup and delicata
again i grow several others this year i'm experimenting with a variety called
early rise that i got from fudco and i'm also experimenting with a variety called naked bear
which is grown for the pepitos so we'll see how those turn out i like to have my three main
staples and then i like to rotate in some new ones maybe i'll find something i like better than these
three but so far in 20 years i haven't um yeah so thank you for watching if you got something out of
this check out my patreon below you can contribute to help me make more and more videos thanks