How long to let winter squash age before using?

 Lesson learned:  Winter squashes (Cucurbita Maximas) need time after harvest to fully mature before using them.

I bought this squash for $6 since it was the only one like it in the bin.  I think it's a candy roaster, but not 100% certain.  It was long, pinkish tan with a blue tip.  It had a small damaged area, and I didn't know how long it would store.  So, I took it home and let the education begin.  First, I halved it with a large chef knife.  It cut through easily, and smelled like cucumber melon (green).  You can see the green in the skin where I cut off the sticker residue.  I saved the seeds of course, which I'm certain will contain mixed Maxima genetics since the whole bin of "Heirloom Pumpkins" were from the same farm & all labeled the same.  Anyway, I spread some real butter on the squash, then sprinkled a little raw sugar on it, then baked it at 375 for an hour.  When done, the skin just peeled off the flesh very easily.  I tried some fresh out of the oven and it was good.  However, I think if I'd have let it age maybe a month or so, it would've been darker.  Its bright yellow flesh filled about a third of a gallon bag, and now sits in the freezer awaiting either a soup, curry, or pie.  I'm not sure it will make a good pie, but with enough spices & sugar, we'll see.  This is experimentation after all...what tips do you experienced winter squash growers have?

I'm in the middle of experimenting with this very point.

I have one type of winter squash that managed to grow in my garden out of half a dozen or more seed varieties.

I harvested 6 squash relatively early. I tried one immediately after harvest. It was of good quality but had no sweetness.

The other 5 that I harvested have been curing in my kitchen for the past 2-3 weeks or so. I will be trying one of them soon. I will sequentially eat them, waiting a week or more between each.

I also have about 8 more that are waiting on the vine as long as possible. They will be the second part of the experiment to see if there's much difference between curing on the vine vs in the kitchen.

I'll try to report back later this year, or early next year if the squash last that long.

What I have observed with this variety so far is, as it cures the color changes from a mottled green to a tan. Also the stem changes from green to a dry brown from the tip progressively toward the fruit. That process just finished after about 2-3 weeks. The color change seems to be ongoing. I am curious as to whether this will provide a clue as to the changing sugar content, or is purely cosmetic.

That sounds like a perfect process to see what you've got there!  I would definitely be interested to hear how your testing turns out.  What variety of squash was the survivor?

Cy Cobb wrote:That sounds like a perfect process to see what you've got there!  I would definitely be interested to hear how your testing turns out.  What variety of squash was the survivor?

Great question to which I do not yet know the answer. I think it's probably a moschata not a maxima, but as to what cultivar... Possibly something local. Best I can find is 鶴首かぼちゃ (tsurukubi kabocha) which just means crookneck winter squash. I'm not too worried about what the cultivar is as long as it grows and tastes good.

Agreed! So long as it produces for you & makes you happy right?

Not familiar with those.  Grew up with Golden Delicious as our winter squash choice.  It is a cross between Hubbard and something else so it is large and shaped like a Hubbard but pumpkin orange instead.  With them, some had a hard skin and the stem has sort of dried off but is still green.  If it had no damage those were the long keepers.  The short keepers that you wanted to use first were ones with damage or the not quite fully ripe.  They spoiled quickly while the good ones would hold to mid Jan before they started to go bad.  Mostly with them the not quite ripe ones the flavor wasn't quite as good but it was close and they were fine to eat.  You just need to use them soon as they got mushy and went bad.

Just fried up the next contender which has been sitting on the shelf for three or four weeks. Sweetness level is much increased. It's still not the sweetest I've tasted, but compared to freshly harvested it's night and day.

I recently spent a couple days cutting open, cooking, & tasting many winter squash.  A couple were moschatas, and I would say they were past edible (porch decor that I scavenged from the yard waste dump).  One looked fine once cooked, but I tried it two different ways & it was still funky.  The other was stringy like it was too far gone.  By that time I had plenty of good maxima squash pulp frozen, so I just returned them to the garden to decompose over winter along with all the rinds.  I did keep the seeds of course, and am growing quite the collection.

One thing I've noticed is that I've had many Maximas of different types produce smooth, vivid orange flesh with a slight sweetness to it.  This makes me think it will be good for pies & such.  I'm trying to narrow down features that I like/don't like, but not really sure that it matters at all though.

At the moment, I'm torn between the hard skinned pumpkin types and the Very hard Hubbard types that you have to drop on concrete to access.  I'm only getting my feet wet with the Moschatas at this point, though I've read they are long keepers.

My mom just used a squash I had given her over year ago,
It was butternut squash and the flesh was in perfect condition, but rather bland.
She didn't roast it, and speculated that might have been why it was meh.

I suspect there's a genetic component to taste, as well as time on the vine, sunlight, growing conditions, etc.

I kinda wish I had a brix meter to do sugar content testing.

I've seen Brix meters on Amazon, but didn't know if I could trust them.  

I was originally planning to use it in my testing of various melons for my landrace projects, but until then, I'll just have to keep eating them and deciding if I like the flavors/textures enough to save seeds for the mix.  I don't have extensive experience with winter squash, but I'm learning quickly and cooking/tasting about every one I come across.  I think this is a really good idea though for one aspect of information that goes into deciding to save seed from an individual squash or not.  

For example, say you are developing a landrace of moschata squash, and you just harvested all shapes and sizes.  It's easy to see a color difference in flesh, but with the data from brix testing, you could choose the sweetest squash out of the lot for seed saving if you are wanting a sweet squash.  I would say you should still sort for flesh color, texture when cooked, etc. However, if after so many generations, all of the visual qualities are equal, and you still wanted to refine your squash into a sweeter direction, the minute differences between one another on the brix scale could be ascertained.

I saw a YouTube video once with someone that tested their melons with a brix meter, and chronicled the process of the entire crop of 20 or 30 melons.  They were all grown in an indoor greenhouse type situation, same melons, same age, same fertilizing inputs, same everything...except brix.  Some were lower, some were average among the lot, and a small number exceeded the average by a few points.  In the pursuit of sweeter producing genetics, those seeds could be saved, grown, and tested again.  Over multiple generations, you could gradually slide the scale upwards in natural sugar averages.  Sounds like a reasonable input for decision making to me.

for what it’s worth, relatively cheap refractometers can be pretty good. you calibrate them yourself, and there’s not a lot that can go wrong with them.

Thanks Greg, am I correct in my understanding that the refractometer measures solids within the liquid (juice), and not sugar content?  I imagine it's assumed that the solids are sugars?  Perhaps I research this a bit more for my understanding.