Yellow Summer Squash

[heavyhitterokra]

How is it that we've made it this many years without a yellow summer squash thread?  

I didn't see a Patty Pan Squash thread here either, but I forgot to plant any of those this Spring, so I guess I'll not be writing on that subject anytime soon.  However, yesterday morning, I went out to our garden and noticed that God was having an 'all you can carry home special' on yellow summer squash.  (Thank you, for that, Lord!) 

So, I got busy picking all I could carry home.  I didn't have a grocery bag or a cart with me, so I just doubled up the tail of my T-shirt and filled it to the brim with summer squash until it was beginning to fall out every time I bent over to pick up another one and I decided to stop picking.

My wife was going into town to meet some old friends in the afternoon, so I sent squash with her to share.  (A guy has to get on that right at the beginning) because as summer advances, there will be so much squash in circulation that your friends will be closing the shades to make you think they're not home. 

Speaking of which, while working up North toward Duluth one summer, back in the '80s, I happened onto an old town tradition of sneaking a big, green zucchini onto your neighbor's porch while they weren't looking.  (It was sort of like the pink flamingo thing that they had going on around here back in the '90s), except in place of sneaking a big, gaudy, pink, plastic yard ornament onto your neighbors front lawn, you'd sneak an unwanted surplus zucchini onto their front stoop instead.  It was a lighthearted way to get one over on your friends.  I enjoyed the sense of comradery they shared there.  There was a special kind of charm in that region that people farther East sometimes fail to grasp. I'm not sure that would fly in Newark, New Jersey?

[Deleted]

How is it that we've made it this many years without a yellow summer squash thread?Z

For me it's more of a memorial thread to long lost squash plants having lost the troops in the Battle of the Squash Bugs.  I'm jealous that you can even grow patty pan.

[macmex]

My father, who lived in NJ much of his life, used to joke about sneaking grocery sacks of zucchini onto the neighbors' porches. We had borer problems in NJ, and when we moved to Oklahoma I had the mistaken hope that we were moving West of their range and would no longer have them. Surprise! They're far worse here than they were in the NJ of my youth.

At one point I grew a Turkish variety of light green summer squash, shaped just like a zucchini. It was called Erkin. It didn't have the hard stem which makes the c. moshata species pretty immune to borers, but it did have resistance. It had such thick, meaty stems, that a single borer couldn't cut off the supply of sap to the plant. Alas, I lost that variety in one of our many moves. I believe it was around 2007 when someone from Gardenweb sent me seed to another Turkish summer squash, this time a vining variety. It was called Dolma Kabak. This one had some resistance because the entire vine, which could get pretty long, put down multitudinous roots. Dolma Kabak also had the distinction of being the most flavorful summer squash I had ever tried. I am sure I shared seed with others, but at some point, in my lack of organization, I let my seed expire and was never able to find more. My original source lost his seed too, and he had brought it over from Turkey.

For some years now (would have to look it up, how many) I've maintained stock of Scarchuks Supreme, which is an acorn squash, developed out East (I believe in Connecticut, for borer resistance. It is a c. pepo, but actually had some c. pepo gourds crossed in, to give it more resistance to borers. Scarchuks is the BEST acorn squash I know, and... when cut young it is at least as good, in flavor, as Dolma Kabak.



This is a picture of some Scarchuks Supreme squash. The vines, too, are quite impressive. Though not rampant, they are extremely vigorous. This is the only c.pepo I maintain at this time. I hope to plant a number more of these, today, for a fall crop. Hopefully I can put in enough to also harvest some summer squash from them too. They are not as high producing as a true summer squash, but then, we don't generally eat as much summer squash as some. (We love summer squash, but one the beans and okra come in I notice that Jerreth doesn't ask about squash much.)