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Fall Decor Pumpkins/squash that are excellent eating

Deedee Dezso

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Mike Barkley, if you do like this new Frankensquash, would you consider sending me a few seeds? I'd love to try it myself and maybe add the genetics to my plans.

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Mike Barkley

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Sure. It might be a while before I try it though. Have a pile of butternut squash to eat, can, or give away first. It looks like the pumpkin will keep fresh for much longer.

If it didn't have bumps I might think it was a very large spaghetti squash. That would be fun!

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Deedee Dezso

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I believe these are both kabocha. Kabocha is in the maxima family. The day I bought the small one it was one of the largest in the store of its variety. Cost me about $2 US. The big one was found in a Walmart @ a set price of just under $7. The small one has a sticker "Good Life Organic" and the big one says "Pampered Pumpkins". I was hoping for a nice blue Hubbard. I may process them tomorrow.

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Cy Cobb

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Also, with the inspiration from this thread, I have been looking in the produce section of various stores, and came across this bin. I see a few varieties that are supposed to be good eating, but at the time, didn't know what to do with them really. They were all edible types, with the gourd looking/winged/warted/decorative types in other bins. Priced per pound.

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Pearl Sutton

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Cy: off the top of my head...

The elongated cream/yellow ones with the green strips are honeyboat delicata. They won't store too long. A month or two at most. Cut them in half, save the seeds, bake them with butter and sweet spices. You won't regret it. :D

The big green ones that are pear shaped are Green Hubbard or something very closely related. Check my first post in this thread for info on them.

The one in about the middle of the pic, green with a bulge on it's head, is a turban. They are either in this thread or the other one I did at the same time about cooking squash, it's linked in that first post (or maybe second one) in this thread.

The big round green one in the lower right corner is Kabocha, oooh yummy. They like to climb, definitely keep seeds if you get one! They bake up sweet and firm. Those were my favorites for a while.

The pure white ones with ridges, I don't know. I'd buy one if I saw them and try them, just because I like to learn :D

Go back the first few posts in this thread, lots of info there, and the link for how to cook them.

Yay! I'm glad you are trying squash!! They really are tasty. :D Winter squash are a LOT more flavorful than zucchini and yellow squash.
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Cy Cobb

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Yes! I did recognize most of the varieties that you mentioned based on your previous descriptions. Some of them had stickers, so it helped to ID them. The white ones were simply "White Acorn Squash" but they were longer than the usual green variety. The green/white striped one at bottom corner & right center looked like an acorn type, but a bit more squatty. I had no idea about the delicata ones. I had that Kabocha & a hubbard in my cart, but thought I was buying too much for one season, so I put them back (regrettably). The more I learn about these, the more excited I get when I see new ones I've never seen before. Thanks for starting this thread. I'm sure we'll all keep it going for some time.

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Deedee Dezso

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I'd like 2 of those largest blue hubbards, please and thank you. I've not seen any near me. But the seeds from the 2 from my most recent addition to this thread are now dry and packed away (I'm starting to really buckle down for the move to the 40 acres!!!)

I know most small pie-type/size pumpkins are pepo which makes growing them anywhere near zucchini and others in the pepo family with the intention of seed saving a tougher prospect. I bought a 2pack @ Costco last week with the intention of seed saving to grow next year.

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Annette Jones

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Hi Pearl,

Greetings from Australia, home of QLD Blue and Jarradale Heirloom Pumpkins among others.

To answer you, they are not the same pumpkin but both are very good flavour. I am not familiar with Blue Doll but it could have been developed our heirloom QLD Blue for the American market.

QLD Blue is more blocky and ribbed like the pic you have posted under Blue Doll. Jarradale does have ribbing, but much shallower and smoother and is flatter, not so blocky in shape.

Personally I think QLD Blue has the slight edge over Jarradale but both are fine and I've often kept mine 9-10 months when I've had a good harvest, the longer kept the better the flavour.

This is a great thread, thanks everyone.

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Chris Quillen

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I supposedly planted semi-bush acorn squash and these are what I ended up with! Are they gourds? Are they edible?

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Rachel Royce

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I bought a big candy roaster at the farmer’s market from apple farmer who comes down every week from the NC mountains. I sliced it longitudinally and roasted it to stuff for a large potluck gathering. (See the fork in the picture to get an idea of its size) Wowza! It was so delicious, better than any winter squash I ever tasted. I couldn’t stop eating the top half while I stuffed a red lentil bulghar pilaf into the bottom half. I eventually made a garbanzo squash hummus-like dip from it. The seeds were outstanding too, large, green, and nutty. I saved them all to grow next year. Apparently this variety was developed by the Cherokee people. The internet says it’s one of the best storing squashing. I can’t wait to buy more from him and to try growing my own next year. I hope it likes to be trellised.

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Pearl Sutton

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Rachel Royce wrote:The internet says it’s one of the best storing squashing. I can’t wait to buy more from him and to try growing my own next year. I hope it likes to be trellised.

My experience is they don't store very long, the skin is too soft. The things I get long storage from have very hard shells. It might also depend on someone's definition of long storage, under 6 months doesn't count as long in my book, but I'm weird

And yes, they do like trellising! There's a picture someplace on permies (I think it was here) of a candy roaster plant eating a shed. it's crawled all over it! Anything that does that will like a trellis.

Try making pumpkin butter out of one

(Recipes online) no sugar needed, OH MY!!

Saralee Couchoud

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One of my family's favorite things in fall is to make pumpkin stew. You cut the top and clean it out. Make your stew in the pumpkin and put it in a large pan and bake for several hours. When you serve the stew you scoop out part of the pumpkin with it

Annette Jones

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Hi Chris Quillen,
Yes are edible but only when very small, about 5-6 inches max, after that the insides get hard and fibrous and are mostly then only used as decorative gourds or as weird Halloween deco. These are Bicolor Pear Gourds and Crown of Thorns.

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Richard Gorny

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Some squash galore ;) It has been a very good year in my little squash path.

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William Bronson

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I scored some squash out of a dumpster, and few more I bought at 3 dollars each.
I aim to sow seeds from them all over at my second property and see what happens.

Thank you Pearl, for hiping me to this use of otherwise overlooked resources!

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Lila Stevens

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A lot of stores will probably be marking those "decorative" pumpkins tomorrow (the day after Halloween) to make way for Christmas stuff. I plan to hit a few stores when I am in the city in a few days and take some home for ourselves and critters, if they are marked down enough.

I'm bumping this thread, thinking others might want to take advantage of the mark-downs that usually happen soon.

I've seen what look like either Musquee de Provence Or Long Island Cheese in the big grocery stores in the nearest city, as well as those bumpy-skin ones. I'm glad I re-read this thread, because I would no way have bought those bumpies otherwise. They look so ugly to me. Also, of course, I know they will have tons of "jack-o-lantern" types that will be just fine for feeding to our goats and chickens, and if they are super marked down can provide a whole lot of long-storing winter food for them. Our local Walmart also has some white ones my kids have been drooling over (they like playing with pumpkins) but I had no idea they might be good to eat. I'll grab some if they mark them down.

I blended up some leftover cooked pumpkin skins last week, and added them to my worm bins, and man, did they go crazy for those! I don't usually blend food for the worms, but seeing how quickly they can process blended foods, I may start doing it more often.

Pearl Sutton

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Good Point Lila!
I was forgetting to bump for that, but yes, they day after Halloween they go down in price. I will go check them!!
I checked a bin at the hardware store, today but it was only Jack o Lantern pumpkins. I want better tasting than those.
My neighbor's decor includes a Blue Hubbard and a big Green Striped Cushaw that she said I can have when she's tired of them :D The neighbors rarely understand me, but they are at least fairly used to me. "Oooh! There's a Blue Hubbard under your plum tree!!"

:D

Lila Stevens

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Pearl Sutton wrote:Good Point Lila!
I was forgetting to bump for that, but yes, they day after Halloween they go down in price. I will go check them!!
I checked a bin at the hardware store, today but it was only Jack o Lantern pumpkins. I want better tasting than those.
My neighbor's decor includes a Blue Hubbard and a big Green Striped Cushaw that she said I can have when she's tired of them :D The neighbors rarely understand me, but they are at least fairly used to me. "Oooh! There's a Blue Hubbard under your plum tree!!"

:D

Well, at least hopefully your "strange" behavior might make them think about things they wouldn't normally. I'm never embarrassed to be seen doing weird stuff like picking up bags of fall leaves from the curb, because I figure at least it might make people think about why I would want this "garbage" and maybe eventually come to the conclusion that it's not garbage at all.

The nice thing is last year I occasionally saw ads where people were trying to rehome their fall decoration pumpkins for free to someone who could use them. I managed to be in the right place at the right time to claim some of them, and ended up with some perfectly nice butternut squash and some Long Island Cheese-type ones. I can't understand at all this idea of using food for decoration and not eating it.

I'm not a big fan of the regular orange pumpkins for eating either, but my goats sure are! I would rather have them eat organic, homegrown pumpkins, but with the drought this summer we didn't get that many, so I'm going to try not to be picky.

William Bronson

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I hollowed out the blue squash today.
It was a huge pain in the butt!
Jack-o-lantern pumpkins might not be tasty but they are easy to scoop out.
I baked some flesh and it was super sweet!
I got two jars of seeds enough for a field of pumpkins.

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William Bronson

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We just got or car back from the shop, and I'm itching to dive some dumpsters for pumpkins!

A good friend pointed out that some of the ornamentals I found wont be edible , and would taint the gene pool, so I will be taste testing everything before it goes to the fields.
Some of then will simply not be worth messing with, but I wont really know until I cut into them.

The big blue squash thing was bitter when I baked it in oil on high, it caramelized and burnt fairly quickly, but in fairness , I wasn't watching it closely.
Next I baked it in in butter on low, and ate it with elote seasoning.
I ate the entire pan..

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Lila Stevens

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I've seen a few ads already where pumpkin patches are giving all their pumpkins away for free; usually the big Jack-O-Lantern types. Unfortunately they are all about an hour away from me, but still might be worth a special trip, if I stack them high in the back of my truck. I think it would amount to $30 in gas and 2 1/2 hours of my time for a pick-up-truck load of pumpkins for my animals for winter.

These are, of course, city pumpkin patches, where a church or something bought a bunch of pumpkins to lay out and make a fake pumpkin patch. The owners of real pumpkin patches out in the country will usually use their leftover pumpkins to either feed their own animals, or give them back to the soil.

Pearl Sutton

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William Bronson:
I agree, gourds (which is what those ornamentals are) rarely taste good, and some will cross with squash, making them taste bitter, bad and wrong. "Gamey" is the word I used for my zucchini that got pollinated by birdhouse gourds. I pulled up all of my plants, killed the volunteers the next year, and threw away all the seeds I had saved from them, I didn't want that contaminating my garden.

The way you cut that blue squash was part of why it was hard to clean. I cut them longitudinally, stem to butt and that makes the seeds easy to remove. Jack O Lanterns were bred to have easy to remove seeds without much webbing, a lot of air space inside, and smooth colored exteriors. Good eating squash have a lot of meat (not a lot of airspace) and the seeds are webbed in.
If you look at this picture I snagged off the net of a Hubbard squash cut in half, you can see how the seeds are webbed in, in a nice neat pattern.

To clean them, you pull them out going with the pattern: one big scoop from stem to butt with hand, spoon, or (what can I say? I'm a tool using animal!) an ice cream scoop that has been sharpened on a grinder gets almost all of it. The seeds squish out of the pulp easily (and shoot across the kitchen if you don't pay attention.)

My companion thread to this one Cooking Fall Decor pumpkins/squash talks of how I usually bake the squash in sections, or whole, then whatever I want to do for a recipe, I use the already baked squash as my base. I think that gives me the most versatility, especially on big squash, I can flavor it different ways and see what we like. People have put recipes there too, worth looking at.

I'm overjoyed you have joined the squashy side!! (Come to the light side, we have heirloom squash!!)
:D

Mike Barkley

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Here's a pic of one of the pumpkrackens. Was a mild pumpkin flavor with a lot of flesh. Made an excellent soup. Seed cavity was mostly hollow with only a small amount of stringy pith that wasn't gooey like many pumpkins are. I use an old canning lid to clear the seed cavity. Works very well.

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Yeah, if I hadn't been trying to preserve it as jack o lantern I would have gotten more flesh, more easily...
Now that Halloween has passed, maybe I' rinse it off and bake it.
Even if I don't like the results, the chickens will!

Something I'm loving about squash is the variety of textures it can bring to the table-literally.
Not only do different varieties have different firmness, but the seeds can be cooked till crunchy , even ground into "nut milk' and tofu.
Now I've not eaten the leaves yet, and I've no reports on anyone eating roots, but really , what versatile beasties they are.

The other thing I love is them being hands off survivors.
I know not all of them are like that, but I've gotten a lot of good tasting volunteers, and also plants delivering food with zero care.
I have some trashy land with questionable soil, and the squashes ability sprawl out from a single point is pretty sexy.

I really want to preserve and plant out a crap load of squash next year.
How do you all treat and preserve the squash seeds you collect ?

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Mike Barkley

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I save the best looking seeds from the best squash & pumpkins to plant the next year. In my experience yellow squash (crooked neck & straight neck) require the most care & attention. The others don't seem to need much. Fertile soil does help them though. I bury a fish carcass or two & a couple of crushed egg shells near each squash. With yellow squash I keep the leaves thinned out for good air circulation & to help the pollinators find the flowers. Those things seem to really boost production.

For seeds to eat I rinse them off good. Then after they dry coat them with a little olive oil & some salt. Bake at 250-275F for about 15 minutes.

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Pearl Sutton

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To keep the seeds I just rinse them off, put them in a shallow dish with a label. The label prevents things like this "Pearl gave me some seeds that say unknown squash, maybe that's where it came from. " :D

It's easy to say "I'll remember what they were!" Until you forget about them for several months, and save more seeds after that. When dry I put them in envelopes that I store in metal containers (popcorn/cookie type tins, I like the size that's about half a popcorn tin.) The envelopes are labeled with name or description, where they came from, the year, how they grew if I know, whether they are organic if I know, how long they lasted in storage, and a 1-10 ranking on how good they tasted. Seems like a lot of info, it's not really, and then three years from now, when you might care more that they were organic, long storing, and taste REALLY good, the data is there. Or if you want seeds to pass on to someone who doesn't care, or will use them for ground cover, you know what to choose.

Saving seeds from squash you can end up with a LOT of seeds VERY fast. I save all seeds from good squash, I roast and eat the seeds from marginal ones.

:D

William Bronson

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I cut up the Galeux d'Eysines.
It has been outside and some rot had started.
Still made for a nice pan of tangy squash.

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I ended up stopping at a closed-down "pumpkin patch" while I was in Austin anyway a few days after Halloween. They were giving them all away for free; not just huge jack-o-lantern pumpkins, but also tons of Blue Hubbards, Long Island Cheese, Jarrahdales, Ghost Pumpkins, and some huge orange flattish ones. I was picking people up at the airport, so I only filled my truck bed halfway. I went back the next day for another full load. I made sure to get all of the Long Island Cheese-type ones that were in good condition; they are such a nice, sweet, thick-fleshed pumpkin, really nice to work with.

I've been chopping up the less-yummy ones for my goats and chickens, and putting small amounts in my worm bins as well. I chopped and roasted a Long Island Cheese one yesterday and made about 5 quart jars of pumpkin puree. I don't can, so we will use it up quickly with pumpkin bread and soup. Maybe mix some into the dogs' food too if we aren't getting through it quick enough. I pureed some of the cooked skins for my worm bins, and the rest went to the chickens. I'll bet the dogs would have enjoyed them too. Maybe next time.

We have a beautiful assortment of pumpkins now lining every empty wall in our living room. If too many start going bad, I may start a trench-type composting pit for them and other materials, and add some of the worms from my worm bin. They definitely won't be wasted.

The 1 1/2 truckloads I took didn't really make a dent in the amount of pumpkins that were there. Though I admit I did take the majority of the most tasty varieties. The only other person I saw there was only loading up jack-o-lantern types, though, so I doubt many people would even care.

Cy Cobb

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Congrats on your huge score! I thought I was pretty lucky coming across a half dozen at the yard waste dump. I'm happy with my freebies, and am cooking them now.

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Lila Stevens

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Cy Cobb wrote:Congrats on your huge score! I thought I was pretty lucky coming across a half dozen at the yard waste dump. I'm happy with my freebies, and am cooking them now.

Thank you! A half dozen free pumpkins is nothing to sneeze at

Check out online classifieds, though; you may still be able to score some from pumpkin patches. Grocery stores also put them on sale super duper cheap, just to get rid of them. I'm now thinking I should go back to the pumpkin patch and get another load if they haven't cleared them out. I have enough for us, but I could get some more just for composting. I'll bet my kids would enjoy breaking them apart with hammers. Maybe I would too, haha.

Deedee Dezso

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I want to dumpster dive for winter squash, or think to visit the pumpkin patch the day after! I get such great ideas from this community!!!

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William Bronson

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So I tried 4 of the decorative squash.
Their tastes ranged from terrible, to "have I just poisoned myself?"
I will be microwaving the seeds I saved out of them, I can't think of any good reason to let them grow, anywhere.

The large amount of seeds compared to flesh did intrigue me.
Looking for varieties that produce lots if seeds fir eating, I found Naked Bear is recommended, which is a hulless variety.
I am unusual in that I prefer hulls on my pumpkin seed.
So far I haven't found what hull on variety of pumpkin is grow specifically for the seeds,but I did find this great post that is discussing oilseed varieties.
https://www.mofga.org/resources/squash/oilseed-pumpkins/

The whole blog looks good, and he mentions in passing using the hard thin skin from some varieties of squash(like spagetti squash) as serving bowls.
That is niche application, to be sure but it reminds me that this kind of squash skin could be used preserved through drying and used in other ways.

Back to my current obsession, squash explorers, if you find any varieties that taste good but just have too many of those darn white seeds, let me know!

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Weird. That one looks like a Kabocha or Green Hubbard, both are excellent.
I wonder if they were grown really weird?
Usually if you say "Oh ICK!" it was a gourd. Those little cute ones you had were all gourds. I assume that's not the ones you tried...?

That's very bizarre.

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So maybe I'm just a little too adventurous.
I just thought of gourds as a subset of squash, and proceeded according!
I just figured they would be bland to bitter.
Instead they were bitter to "Bleg! What have I done!"
So yeah, no more taste testing gourds...

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William Bronson wrote:So maybe I'm just a little too adventurous.
I just thought of gourds as a subset of squash, and proceeded according!
I just figured they would be bland to bitter.
Instead they were bitter to "Bleg! What have I done!"
So yeah, no more taste testing gourds...

That would do it! Gourds are not generally edible, and then only at the earlier stages. Once they ripen they are vile.
As far as spaghetti squash skin goes, I had one that I roasted the squash, scooped it out, put it out to toss in the garden and forgot about it. It dried nicely, so I turned it upside down in the garden and the toads found it!!

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After a hard search I found out that at least one domestic producer of white(hull on) pumpkin seeds uses a Hubbard variety called Golden Delicious .
Thats enough for me to start buying Hubbard squash.

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Is Golden Delicious different from Golden Hubbard? Is it a proprietary strain?

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Almost all of the squash that are hollow inside have a lot of seeds. Looking at my seed trays that have not been coped with, Galeux (sp) looks like it has most. Looking at my inventory, I'd say Galuex, Blue Doll, Long Island Cheese, and the big white ones look like they have most.

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