How do you store winter squash?

I am hoping for a bumper squash harvest this year. I don't have the space to store a whole lot of winter squashes in their natural form. I have been looking into dehydrating them.

I have dehydrated zucchini in past years, by slicing them and laying them flat in a hanging contraption in the greenhouse. Lightly seasoning the surfaces, made for some yummy chips. But that uses a lot of flat space. I don't have much.

This YouTube shows spiralling summer and winter squash, she skewers it with a dowel, pulls the two ends apart accordion style and hangs it up to dry.

This one peels, seeds, and slices winter squash in ¾ inch rings, gives the option of sliding a dowel through it and hanging to dry. When dry but not brittle, she shows how to cut a ring to make a length, then braids them for storage. She uses a dehydrator for her drying method.


What do you do with your abundance?

Type of winter squash matters.  Most varieties of winter squash are winter squash because of their "longer" shelf life stored in a cool dry, non freezing location.  For example Golden Delicious winter squash(fine grained orange version of hubbard) will typically store on the shelf in a cool dry location till mid to late Jan if you got the ones with no damage and fully ripened.  Most varieties will carry into mid december at least.  The ones that didn't fully ripen and the ones that took ANY damage need to be used first.  Another thing to watch out for is a moldy area where there was ground contact before picking.  If there is wash it, clean with H2O2 and carefully dry the area before storage.  One other thing is be sure the squash don't touch each other.  If they are piled, one bad squash can ruin the whole bunch.

The other thing with it growing up was to dice it in about 1" cubes and put in a canning jar loose fill and pressure can.   For the liquid with it apple juice, sugar solution or brine solution were the most common although mom did one batch with vinegar too.  Someone will want to pack the jar or puree but that violates pressure canning rules and is dangerous in the extreme.

There was also one batch of squash leather made in the dehydrator.  Personally I didn't like the texture or the flavor but some people liked it.  It was sugar and ascorbic acid? added to the puree.

I still had 2024 butternuts in the basement a month ago and still have spagetti squash down there (now July 3rd).

Mine occasionally last 2+ years but they're a little dry when I do finally cut one open. They still make fine sauce for pasta at that point.

Here's the most traditional way of drying them I know: http://www.digital.library.upenn.edu/women/buffalo/garden/garden-V.html