Squash

Acorn on the Vine

Trombetta on a Trellis

Lying in State with Onions & Rosemary

Lasagna Sauce with Trombetta in there somewhere

Ready for that cool, dry place

Varieties We Grow

After experimenting with many varieties of squash, we've jettisoned most of them from our garden plans and now only grow Acorn (Table King: 105 days) and Trombetta di Albenga (58 days). We pick the Trombettas late -July through August, leaving one squash on the vine to later dry and use for seeds. We harvest our Acorn squash in September/October.

Trombetta de Albenga

What a squash! A heavy producer, it's easy to grow and a tasty addition to vegetarian stir fries & baked dishes like lasagna. Its flesh is much firmer than regular zucchini, so it doesn't go all watery & mushy when you cook it.

Plant your Trombetta under a trellis so the fruit can hang and gravity can help it achieve an impressively pendulous shape. The sight of a dozen green, graceful Trombettas suspended from our trellis almost brings tears to our eyes.

Acorn (Table King)

The greatest thing about this variety of Acorn squash is that it doesn't wander all over your garden. The plant has a maximum spread of only 1-1.2 meters (3-4 feet). Count on 6-10 squashes per plant. They're delicious baked and in soups.

Getting Started

We plant our Trombetta and Acorn seeds indoors in late March, two or three seeds per 10 cm (4 inch) diameter plastic pot in a half-compost half potting soil mixture. Make sure the seeds stay moist & that they don't dry out. Harden your seedlings off by setting them outside for two or three days before your plant them outside near the end of May, bringing them back indoors in the evening.

We usually plant 2 seedlings about 45 cm (18 inches) in each compost-enriched hill. Make sure your squash plants are in full sun. Give your squash seedlings space to grow: about 2 meters (6 feet) around for the Table King Acorn hills. If you've got a trellis (or a fence), Trombetta seedlings can be planted in hills 60 cm (2 feet) apart. Trombettas are heavy producers so you may want to thin out your seedlings to 2 or 3 of the most vigorous plants.

Squash plants thrive when there's lots of organic mater in the soil. When preparing the hill(s), for both Trombetta and Acorn, throw some kitchen scraps into the bottom of the hole, chop them up with a spade, cover them with some soil and then add lots of compost to the remainder of your soil mixture that mounds up your hill.

Plant your seedlings, pat down the soil around them and water them. For their first 3 weeks of growth, you might want to protect them from attacks by birds with a floating row cover or clear plastic containers with holes poked in the top.

Caring for Your Squash Plants

Squashes are heavy feeders, so side-dress them with compost once or twice in their growing season. Mulch your plants with straw or grass clippings. Water your plants consistently— the roots, not the leaves. If you get the leaves wet, don't work in amongst the plants. Bruising the wet leaves provides an easy avenue for pathogens to enter your plants.

During hot dry sells, deep water the roots twice a week. Mulch your squash plants as well. This will help conserve necessary moisture content in the soil and smother weeds; and as it decays, the mulch will provide the squash (and microbes in the soil) with nutrients.

Trombettas do well if supported on a trellis. Make sure your Acorns don't sit on the soil: they can rot if their bottoms are frequently wet. Slip a board or brick underneath them to keep them off the ground.

Harvesting & Storing Your Squash

Trombetta grows fast; and if you plant your seedlings in late May, you can start picking your Trombettas near the end of July. Treat these early-picked Trombettas like zucchini. Use them as soon as you pick them in soup bases, stir fries, and— sliced nice and thin— in vegetarian lasagnas, mousakas and ratatouilles. Trombettas picked later in the season after the vines die in September can be treated like winter squash, so they can be store for a couple of months.