Lewis Steward

Thom Bri wrote:Are you able to order seeds from Canada or Europe? Northern Europe has some interesting corn, descended from the northern corns originally imported back in the colonial era. I have recently been reading a lot of very interesting research into early northern varieties in the Polish scientific literature, for example.

I haven't looked if I am honest... I think the import charges would be far too expensive!

It's a good suggestion and I will have a search. Do you have any recommendations?

Eastern Europe and Baltic/Slavic areas are like seed treasure troves.

Christopher Weeks wrote:Lewis, I did exactly the same thing! I jumped into landracing while I was such a newbie gardener that I didn't realize the three big squash species wouldn't cross up well. I thought the difference was winter vs summer squash. (Which is also not any kind of reasonable distinction because you can eat young winter squash like zucchini/courgette and let those summer squash grow giant and cure for storage!) Here's the mix I started with:

Candystick Dessert Delicata C pepo
Sweet Meat - Oregon Homestead C maxima
Spaghetti Squash C pepo
Galeaux d'Eysines C maxima
Potimarron C maxima
Musquee De Marog C moschata
Giant Show King C maxima
Guatemalan Green-Fleshed Ayote C moschata
Nanticoke C maxima
Sweet Dumpling C pepo
Hessel Sugar Loaf C pepo
Oregon Homestead Sweet Meat C maxima
Marina di Chioggia C maxima
North Circle Butternut C moschata
Bigger Better Butternut C moschata
898 Experimental C moschata
Canada Crookneck C moschata
Lakota C maxima
Hopi Pale Grey C maxima
North Morning Moon C maxima
Vermillion River C maxima
Theron's Winter C maxima
Sweet Meat C maxima
Best of Buttercup C maxima
America C moschata
Gete-Okosomin C maxima
Borchart's Wonder C maxima
Gueramon Martinique C moschata
Arnie's Golden Buttercup C maxima
Emerald Naked Seeded Pumpkin C pepo
Lofthouse Buttercup C maxima
Ukrainian Squash C maxima

I've also used Joseph's squash ID doc to start sorting things out, but it's very incomplete and I'm still growing squash. I'll eat whatever I get and save seeds from what keeps and what I like.

Wow, that's an impressive list. Have you had much success?

Have there been many crosses amongst squash that you can identify?

Joseph Lofthouse wrote:In decades of growing different species of squash, close together, I have only found one naturally occurring inter-species squash hybrid among maxima-pepo-moschata. In theory, a maxima/moschata hybrid might occur infrequently.

Mixta and moschata seem to me to not quite be separate species, so I find hybrids between them fairly regularly.

I don't expect poisons to show up in your squash, unless you grow decorative gourds.

Thank you so much Joseph! So happy that I don't need to worry about poisons from any rare crosses that could happen.

Never heard of Mixta before... I take it's common in North America?

Thom Bri wrote:

Lewis Steward wrote:
I am trying to do the same thing for Corn but there's such little open pollinated varieties in the UK... There's plenty of F1s to choose from... I don't suppose that would be a bad thing to use F1s to build a grex or will they be sterile??

How jealous I am of all the amazing corn varieties you have in the US

Sounds like you have a great start for your squash project. Next year let us know how it's going.

As for corn, that's my hobby.

Corn sterility is rare enough you shouldn't even think about it. If it occurs you won't even notice because the other corn around it will do the job. F1s F2s etc. are fine.

What kind of corn is your goal? Sweet corn to eat as a vegetable, or field corn for making cornmeal to eat yourself, or animal food?

I certainly will keep you updated.

That's amazing to hear that I don't really need to worry about sterility... phew one less thing to worry about! Haha

I suppose sweetcorn is my corn goal but I do love the colours of drying flour corn. My corn this year hasn't done so well... as the weather here has been very weird.... one day we had 29C then the next day dropped to 17C with wind and rain so very bipolar, however there's a few small ears being produced and hopefully these are fully pollinated... i will save anything produced as seed.

A family member mixed a popcorn variety in with my sweetcorn seeds without realising but it's a very small amount and i could pick them out if this causes issues.

Thank you everyone for your help and support. I am glad I joined now.

Thank you so much for all your help! Much appreciated.

I've been through my list and organised accordingly, hopefully this is a good number of varieties to begin with? Some of the below are homesaved seed.

Looks more Maxima heavy then I realised and some of the Pepos I thought were Maxima or Moschata for sure!
turns out there's only one Moschata. I struggle to find Moschata varieties in England perhaps I am not looking in the right places haha.

I love butternut squash but I don't really have the US weather for it. Included 5 seeda from an F1 I've had knocking around for while... didn't think it could do any harm. I did think it was a moschata but the packets says Pepo.

I have plenty of space so no issues on that front. Looking for to seeing what next year brings.

Squash
Big Max Pumpkin (maxima)
Blue Hungarian (maxima)
Hokkaido (maxima)
Burgess buttercup winter squash (vine type) (maxima)
North Georgia candy roaster (maxima)
Jumbo pink banana (maxima)
Volskaya grey (maxima)
Queensland blue (maxima)
Boston winter squash (maxima)
Victor winter squash (maxima)

Organic Thelma Sanders sweet potato winter squash (pepo)
Harrier butternut squash F1 (pepo)
Organic Winter Luxury Pumpkin (pepo)
Winter early butternut squash (pepo)

Waltham butternut Squash (Moschata)

I am trying to do the same thing for Corn but there's such little open pollinated varieties in the UK... There's plenty of F1s to choose from... I don't suppose that would be a bad thing to use F1s to build a grex or will they be sterile??

How jealous I am of all the amazing corn varieties you have in the US

Hi there!

I am new here. I will keep it simple...

Have I fallen at the first hurdle?

I am going to give Landrace gardening a try as it feels like the most obvious way to garden.

I want to start with Landrace Squash (North West England) I really enjoy growing Squash, makes sense to start there!

I've been through my squash seeds and ordered a few more and put them all in jar and then realised that some of the packets have the scientific names such as Maxima, Pepo and Moschata... have I messed up?

Should I have only mixed Maxima together ect and will these cause toxic squash if a Maxima mixes with a Pepo?

Thank you!