so it's towards the end of June and it's time to harvest our winter squash you
can tell when winter squash are ready to harvest when the plants start dying back
and these fruits here you'll notice that the stem on them gets really hard it
almost kind of becomes kind of woody and that's when you know it's time to
harvest your winter squash winter squash are different than summer squash because
they only make one time and you typically plant those later in the year
so you usually plant summer squash as soon as the temperature breaks warm for
winter squash you want to wait a couple more weeks to plant those it's a hot one
out here this afternoon it's about 95 degrees you can see my shirt here's
about drinks but we got to get these things out of the ground and get them in
storage area get them in the shade get them in a cooler area so they'll store
better and store for a long time so when the spaghetti squash when they're young
they look like this they're kind of green and the stem is softer on them and
then once they sit out and mature on the vine for a while that's when they
actually turn yellow so that's a good another good indicator you can tell a
ripe one from one that's not ready yet so the varieties I like to plant our
spaghetti squash and acorn squash for spaghetti squash
I like this mini variety right here which is called angel hair this is a
hybrid variety produced by Johnny's and this kind of like a personal sized
spaghetti squash normal spaghetti squash you can get about twice this size these
little mini sized ones here are perfect for just a couple people they're really
really prolific these kings these things can make up to about 15 fruits a plant
so does it take a very large space to these spaghetti squash here these many
ones to give you a lot of food and the good thing about these winter squash is
they store for a very long time especially the spaghetti and then the
acorns that would grow as well for the acorn squash I like this variety
right here this variety is called tip-top PMR and the PMR stands for
powdery mildew resistance so here in the south where we can have a lot of
moisture at one time and a lot of humidity powdery mildew is a big problem
on squash and other cucurbits so this variety here's a hybrid variety that has
a disease package that makes it resistant to powdery mildew and that's
really helpful and letting that plant hang on and be healthy a little longer
until these get ready to harvest so once these fruits right here get ready like I
said the stems alone get pretty hard so you want to make sure you got your good
pair of pruners to come in here and cut those stems like that
so you're not going to pick these like regular squash you're gonna need some
pruners or something sharp becoming here and cut these stems when growing winter
squash in my opinion one of the most important elements are growing them is
having drip irrigation you want to reduce that leaf moisture if at all
possible because it's going to reduce those fungal diseases and with a drip
you can keep them watered more regularly more evenly and really get a nice stand
of fruit so if you're gonna grow winter squash or pumpkins or anything like that
I would highly recommend you putting on drip irrigation so once we gather all
these what we'll do is we'll just put them on the same rack that we put our
onions and potatoes that rack I showed you in a previous video when we were
harvesting our onions we'll just put them on that rack which is in the shade
it's in a cooler spot not going to get any Sun it's elevated off the ground so
it's going to keep these guys dry and these things will store for several
several months up to about six months we'll probably have them all gone by
then but it's a great vegetable that will store through the summer when you
may not be able to grow squash and stuff because of the heat and the humidity so
if you've never tried growing winter squash in your vegetable garden I would
highly recommend you giving it a try these things are out here pretty easy to
grow they're pretty easy to harvest only a one-time harvest and these things are
very versatile food you can do a lot of things with these in the kitchen you
can roast them you can put them in soups they make really good baby food you can
put them in smoothies so much things you can do with them a very valuable crop to
grow in your vegetable garden so if you've got any questions about growing
winter squash put those in the comments and we'll be glad to answer them for you
if you'd like a set of these pruners to harvest your winter squash or like some
of these harvesting buckets I'll put a link to those in the
description and we'll see you guys on the next video