Winter squash harvest/ cure questions

This is only my second time growing pie pumpkins, and my first time growing kabochas. We have had 1 light frost so far and aren’t forecasted to get another day anytime soon. Lots of lows in the 40s though, and the garden only gets half sun this time of year. I’m wondering when to harvest the kabochas and pumpkins and how to cure them.

We have some pumpkins that are totally orange and others that are totally green, some of each on the same plants. I have already pruned off all the squashless vines and any leaves that are blocking sun from the fruits. The kabochas are all green, but I think they stay that way.

Ive read to harvest when the skins are hard and the stems start to shrivel. Ill have to check on that when I get home.

Ive read to harvest before frost and I’ve read to harvest after frost kills the vines and leaves. Opposing ideas…

Ive read to cure them at 75-85 degrees and high humidity for like 10 days, but I’ve also read to “leave them outside in a sunny spot for a few days”. 2 very different things this time of year!

We dont have any reasonable way to give them 10 days of high heat and humidity that i can think of.

Anyone have recommendations on when I should harvest and how to cure for long term storage? Also, what to do about the solid green pumpkins.

This may not be the best way, but it is what I've done and been quite happy with the results. Most of our pumpkins (moschata, the fairytale kind) were still green when we harvested them last year. A couple were mostly orange with a bit of green left. I basically left them on the vine as long as possible, watching the forecast for anything approaching a killing frost. Harvested them the day before the frost was forecast and brought them inside. I kept them on the floor of our living room and put the greener ones in front of the window. They all ripened to orange eventually. Some of them we cooked right away, but many kept for ten months and there are a couple we still have yet to cook. There was one that was hidden and got left out during the frost. It looked kind of strange, but even it stored for about nine months. I don't recall what temperature it was in our house when we harvested, but definitely no where near the suggested curing conditions. It's probably worth noting that we didn't keep our house super warm in the winter, usually between 65 and 55 degrees, rarely up to 75. So that may have helped.

I used to use bushel baskets in a shed that was in the shade and had pretty good ventilation, for pumpkins, acorn, butternut and buttercup squash

Heather Sharpe wrote:This may not be the best way, but it is what I've done and been quite happy with the results. Most of our pumpkins (moschata, the fairytale kind) were still green when we harvested them last year. A couple were mostly orange with a bit of green left. I basically left them on the vine as long as possible, watching the forecast for anything approaching a killing frost. Harvested them the day before the frost was forecast and brought them inside. I kept them on the floor of our living room and put the greener ones in front of the window. They all ripened to orange eventually. Some of them we cooked right away, but many kept for ten months and there are a couple we still have yet to cook. There was one that was hidden and got left out during the frost. It looked kind of strange, but even it stored for about nine months. I don't recall what temperature it was in our house when we harvested, but definitely no where near the suggested curing conditions. It's probably worth noting that we didn't keep our house super warm in the winter, usually between 65 and 55 degrees, rarely up to 75. So that may have helped.

Good to know! Our house will probably be in the 60s and relatively dry so far from the “idea” climate to cure them. I’ll probably do like you and leave them on the vine until right before a hard frost and then hope that curing in the house is good enough. Do you wash them with bleach water or soapy water, or just give them a little wipe to get loose dirt off?

I bet curing in the house is just fine. Not really sure how I'd create the "ideal" curing conditions at that time of year either.
I just wiped the dirt off with a damp towel and dried them off. Since they stored so long, I did have to dust them every now and again. I used it as an opportunity to check and make sure they weren't going off.

Thank you for this post! I just carelessly "harvested" a few butternut squash early while working in the garden, and was wondering how I was going to create
a temperature of 80 to 85 degrees Fahrenheit and a relative humidity of 80 to 85 percent for 10 to 14 days.

Well I'm also confused about how to know my (maxima) squash are ripe and how to cure them.

I think in previous years I didn't try to cure them, just put them in storage in the cool dry space under the stairs in my house. They stored fine from October till February or March.

This year, having read about curing, I put them in the south facing window in my solar house. They get really very hot by evening, definitely hotter than body temperature. Is that going to be a problem?

I don't know why I'm meddling with curing, since storing directly worked fine in previous years.

Also, from two seeds (1 Lofthouse Maxima and one kabocha from a Japanese friend) I harvested more squash than I can eat, cook for guests, and give away all winter, but there are still more out there, in various stages of maturity.

On the Lofthouse Maximas, the stems don't get corky all the way along the 2-inch length, but do kind of shrink and look corky for the very first part attached to the fruit, and remain fat with recessed green stripes for the rest of the 2-inch length. Is that ripe enough? And I've never had one get so hard I can't make a mark with my thumbnail. So I'm always confused about if the squash is mature enough to harvest.

I want someone to definitively tell me what to do!

I just pick mine and them put them on a table in a "cool" room that room runs about 14/16C all winter they last until spring that way. I do keep an eye on them as sometimes one will decide it wants to dissolve.