Josh Mayfield

In preparation for the coming season, I'm thinking back to the last season. I would characterize the season as a failure. Not because of the plants themselves, but because the weather (constant rain, then 5 weeks of heat and drought), and the poor soil (0% organic matter, compacted clay). About 8 of the 40 varieties gave me a small harvest, and the rest were total failures. So what are my takeaways?

1. F1 hybrids have the best chances of success in the harshest conditions. Whether it was hybrids I made myself outperforming their parents, or most hybrids I purchased outperforming most OP varieties, I could generally see heterosis at work. The hybrids out-competed the weeds best, which allowed them to set more fruit and shrug off damage from insect pests better. Now, a couple open-pollinated varieties also performed as well as the best hybrids, but most of the top varieties were hybrids. And yes, I imagine modern landraces could perform similarly well, but landrace breeding isn't an option for me as a market grower.

2. No-till really hinders squash on poor soil, but it does aid in drought resistance. Squash just don't like bad, compacted soil. Plant growth was 3x more rapid on identical varieties planted in broadforked soil amended with compost. Yet, the no-till squash endured 5 weeks of drought and daily highs in the 90s. The rye mulch (and weed mulch if I'm honest) really helped here.

3. Success seems possible. I was able to cross and save seeds from several promising varieties. These varieties generally come from South/Central America, and southeastern Asia. They exhibited strong resilience, and some had pretty incredible flavor. My grow outs this year will let me know how successful I was in capturing the best genetics.

4. Squash bugs really, really suck. Literally, I suppose. Squash with thinner skin are more vulnerable. The nymphs crowd on the fruit late in the season, meaning my harvest was much smaller than I predicted. Fruit would look fine and then rot on the vine a couple weeks later. I'm hoping the flooding from Helene and this relatively harsh winter will reduce the pest pressure this coming season.

5. I really hope government grants are not permanently frozen. It will be very hard for me to justify spending hours hand-pollinating every plant once I begin F2 growouts. Hoping to get a Southern SARE grant or similar. If I can't I'll be restricted to small growouts each year and slower progress.

Steve Thorn wrote:Hey Cy, I was surprised that they turned out a lot better than I expected!

I'll try to get together all the photos and post them soon.

I hope yours turn out well!

Hi Steve, I tried my hand at a borer-resistant kabocha Edmund Frost with Common Wealth Seeds has been working on. It had excellent borer resistance, almost as good as a Seminole pumpkin, but still some damage. It was still a bit susceptible to what we call squash bugs here, anasa tristis, and the Yellow Vine Disease they carry, and the eating quality varies because it was an F4 I think. But check it out maybe!

Well that squash patch really got away from me after my last post. Squash plants succumbed to disease, a groundhog began eating everything in sight, and my dog trampled half the patch trying to get the groundhog. But it recovered, I took care of most of the groundhogs, and harvested close to 2000 lbs of squash last year.

A few favorites:
1. This cross between a Thai Rai Kaw Tok and a Rancho Marques. This plant produced delicious fruit with rock-hard skin and bright orange flesh. Tasted like spiced cider!
2. This Vietnamese pumpkin was extremely productive and disease resistant. Taste was like a typical butternut.
3. Thai Kang Kob. Has such a rich, tangy flavor. To me, it might be the best for pies and quick breads, because it packs the biggest pumpkin flavor punch. Not productive, all the fruit kept dying, but I harvested two.
4. Chinese Tropical Pumpkin. Nutty flavor, decent productivity, great disease resistance. Late maturity though.
5. The largest and latest-maturing of them all, a Puerto Rican Cuello Largo. 21 lbs and a bit over 30 inches long, 150 days to maturity. Flavor and dry matter were pretty meh though.

Thankfully, I was able to hybridize quite a few of these promising varieties, and I'm looking forward to planting a full 1.5 acres of the hybrids and some new varieties this year on some leased land. I'll be selfing or crossing lots of them and hopefully in 2025 I'll be able to begin proper selections of the F2 plants.

Everything is growing fast! I've made a few crosses already for trying out next year.

1. Guatemalan green ayote.

2. Here's an Indonesian butternut-type squash that should get quite large.

3. A Seminole hybrid I made last year. Very healthy foliage and early to set fruit.

4. The mature kabocha with (hopefully) interspecific F1 hybrid seed inside. I'll report back in July.

Thanks! I'm hoping for something like a medium-vine variety. Something that can still root at the nodes for vine borer resistance. We’ll see how it goes!

Oops, didn't fully read your question. I don't know of any other Seminole crosses that are commercially available. I made a cross last year, between Butterbush and Seminole. I'm growing the F1 hybrids this year to gauge their productivity and flavor. If it seems like a winner, I'll begin developing it, but it would be a few years before I could offer any amount of seed.

Seminole pumpkin produces very well and very reliably, as does South Anna. South Anna is a Waltham/Seminole cross. South Anna and Seminole (a smaller, productive variety) can both be purchased from the South Anna breeder himself, at www.seedwise.com. Also available from Southern Exposure.
In my experience, Seminole produces well, but it NEEDS a lot of water and space, and shouldn't be planted into compacted soil. You’ll get an initial flush of fruit that you can harvest in late July or August, and then a second flush as temperatures cool in August/September. The second flush may not have enough time to fully mature, but they make an amazing summer squash when picked while the skin is still glossy.
South Anna works much the same as Seminole, but it didn't have quite as large of a second flush, and didn't require quite so much water.

Well here we are!
- About 200 squash plants are in the ground
- 26 varieties of winter squash
- Lots of interesting tropical and Asian varieties

I'll post photos and list some of the more interesting varieties once the plants begin to mature.

I've performed some of my first crosses already with the varieties I started in pots! I’m even attempting an interspecific cross (pictured below): c. maxima x c. moschata. I don't think this particular cross will go anywhere, but it'll be an interesting proof of concept. Planning a few more interspecific crosses this summer that could have much more market potential.

Hello, I’m a market gardener in South Carolina. This year I’m starting a squash breeding project by doing a variety trial. I'm going to try to use this thread to post about my goals, varieties, their crosses, and any success I find along the way!

Goals: short and medium-length vine c. moschata that are productive, delicious, and resistant to squash bugs, pickle worms, and mildews.

Varieties: most crosses I'll be making will involve Butterbush. Quick to maturity, short vine, coppery red flesh, delicious, but can't handle heat, pest, or mildew pressure at all. Most of the other varieties come from SE Asia and South and Central America. I expect they'll be vigorous and disease resistant like the few I've grown, but probably slow to mature and having huge vines. I'll post more of them once I have seeds in the ground. Right now my squash patch is just a lot of black plastic in my front yard.

For now I'm growing out a few Butterbush in pots and building my spreadsheet to assess and compare varieties. I'll try to upload some photos if I can. More updates to come in April/May!

Kay Lothwen wrote:Hi, if you're still looking for seed, I may be able to help. I grew Rai Kaw Tok pumpkins this year and saved a handful of seed from one, and I'd be happy to share, but I am fairly new to both gardening and seed saving so I can't promise the seed is pure until I grow it out next year and get a look at what it produces. Both male and female blossoms were bagged with organza bags before they opened, and I hand pollinated the next morning and re-bagged for several days, but I did notice ants in the male flower and I don't know if they could have caused cross pollination since I did grow other moschata squash varieties nearby.

Thanks Kay! I did already find someone who generously shared seed with me. I'll be trying it this year along with Thai Kang Kob and a host of others.

Kay Lothwen wrote:If you're trying different moschata types for flavor, I did that myself in the last few years and I can also recommend Violina Rugosa butternut as one to try, it did pretty good for me against squash borers this year, and it might be my favorite for flavor so far, very sweet and rich. Its only real downside is that it isn't super productive. If you could get that flavor into a more productive variety, you'd have a winner for sure.
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Tetsukabuto was the best against borers, completely unfazed by the nasty little things. Production and taste is good, but it's a hybrid so that's a big drawback as you can't save seed. I think it's a moschata/maxima hybrid? It requires cross pollination from another variety and the seed inside mostly doesn't seem viable, though I do occasionally come across one or two plump ones in a squash. I am going to try to bag some blossoms on it next year just on the chance I might get a viable seed, I figure there's no harm in trying.  

I'll be trialing both Violina Rugosa and Tetsukabuto this year as well! I'm glad to hear it did well against vine borers, that's a major issue for us here, though the squash bugs might be even worse. In fact, I'll be trialing between 21 and 26 butternut/calabaza/tropical pumpkin/kabocha varieties this year, including some F1 crosses I made last year! I'll probably do a write up and post about it at the end of the season.