Restoring the Warsaw Buff Pie Pumpkin
Mar 16, 2023 19:46:21 GMT -6
amyinowasso, heavyhitterokra, and 3 more like this
Post by macmex on Mar 16, 2023 19:46:21 GMT -6
I grew up in a gardening home. My father and mother helped me to have a garden as early as 4 years of age and my dad taught me a lot about propagation and seed saving, but back then (in the 60s) seed saving wasn't "a thing" with most gardeners. The term "heirloom vegetable" hadn't even been coined. I believe that came in the 80s.
I left home to study in 1977 and between that fall and 1981 I only managed to grow one garden. That was in Langsing, IL, in the summer of 1980. That year I didn't grow anything but stock seeds, from the rack in the bus terminal, in Chicago, I purchased while commuting to work.
Jerreth and I were married in the spring of 1981 and we had a garden that year, but again, we didn't really have anything of heritage quality. Shucks, we didn't even get off our honeymoon until nearly June and that year, our garden was in Siloam Springs, AR. So when we hit seminary in Winnona Lake, IN, in 1982 I was really hoping to garden again! We arrived in Indiana the fall of 1982 and spring of 1983 was our first really good garden as a married couple (first really good garden I'd had since 1980). I spent hours that winter pouring over issues of Gardens for All and any other garden magazine I could lay hands on. I'm pretty sure I first heard about seed saving through Gardens for All. I believe it was in 1983 that I first requested seed for Tomato Rocky from my father, who had been growing it since 1973, back home, in NJ. In 1984 we joined the Seed Savers Exchange, which was like throwing gas on the fire of my interest in seed saving! Anyway, in the fall of 1984 I was working at Owen's Super Value, a grocery store in Warsaw, right next to Winnona Lake, where we lived and went to school (Grace Theological Seminary). I was carrying groceries one evening when I took a load to a pickup truck for an older couple. The truck had a camper top on the bed and the man opened the back for me to load the groceries into it. I was surprised when he opened the back of the camper top and there I saw that the whole back of the truck bed was FULL of squash! They were all buff colored. Some were rounded or oblong like pumpkins and some were shaped like a butternut squash. I commented on how beautiful I thought those squash were and the fellow reached in and grabbed a pumpkin shaped fruit, handing it to me as "a tip."
I asked if he had grown them and what he called them. He didn't have a name for them. His wife commented dryly, that he'd been growing them for 30 years and that every fall he'd have so many that he didn't know where to put them. So, he'd load them into the bed of his truck where, eventually they'd freeze. I enthusiastically thanked them for the squash and headed back into the store for another load of groceries, stashing my trophy in the break room with my other things
Having read about heirlooms I felt I had come upon a genuine heirloom. I was SO EXCITED that I forgot to ask for contact information on the couple and thus missed out on getting any more details about this history of this variety. But I did cut that squash within a few days and saved the seed, offering it the very first year I had a listing in the Seed Savers Exchange. I sent it to a number of gardeners, including to a friend I met through Gardens for All, Roger Quiet, a dentist in the Tulsa area. He grew it in Tulsa in 1986.
I grew this squash in Indiana. In fact, in 1985, it was one of the the very first solid foods we offered our first born when he was old enough to start on some solids. The flesh was so fine grained that we didn't have to grind it at all for him to eat it.
We grew it in Tlatlauqui, Puebla, in 1989, where it barely made it, due to the cool conditions. We grew it for years in Los Remedios, Tasquillo, Hidalgo, in the high desert of the Mexican Bajío. There, in a warmer climate, it did okay, though it could never keep up with the native Calabaza de Castilla, which was specially adapted to that climate and the 20 degree latitude sunlight. I hand pollinated most of those years, in order to keep it from getting crossed, and... inadvertently, selected for the rounder pumpkin shape, as I was partial to it.
When we returned to the USA in 2001 I brought my seed with me and from 2002-2004 we grew it in NJ, where it did very well. Then in 2005 we moved to Tahlequah, OK and grew it in our garden, here from 2006 until 2014. But we had more of a struggle with it in Oklahoma. This was partly because of the extremely variable weather we have and partly because of the abundance of squash bugs, which sometimes killed my little plants. The Warsaw Buff Pie Pumpkin, as I had named it, struggled just a tad more than the Old Timey Cornfield Pumpkin, in this climate and under these conditions. If I recall correctly, I first grew Old Timey Cornfield Pumpkin in 2009 and soon neglected WBPP. We had some bad years (drought, etc.) and my seed for WBPP got old. In order to maintain either of these fine squash I had to hand pollinate and life was hectic. In 2014 I grew WBPP for the last time and did not manage to get mature seed, and, for about 5 years I tried without success to make a crop from old seed. The seed, though sometimes sprouted, didn't have enough vigor to grow. So I had effectively lost this variety.
Meanwhile Glenn Drowns (Sandhill Preservation Center) lost his seed due to theft. Roger Quiet passed away, and had not been able to garden since the late 80s due to health problems. I couldn't find anyone with viable seed.
In 2016 we had a visit from some representatives of the Seed Savers Exchange. When they were preparing to drive down from Iowa they asked if they could bring any seeds that we had donated, which we might like to have from their storage. I immediately mentioned the Warsaw Buff Pie Pumpkin. They located some seed and brought it. Though it was getting late, as soon as they headed back to IA I planted a sizeable patch of that seed, only to discover that it was crossed up. The plants looked exactly like I expected but the fruit was long necked and very different from what I originally grew. So, I kept looking for anyone who might have seed. This winter I had some more correspondence with Sarah Straate, the SSE seed historian and their new coordinator, Josie Flatgard. They informed me that they had previously given me seed from a 2008 grow out (if I recall correctly). They still had a limited amount of seed from 1986! After some correspondence Josie asked if I would like to replenish their seed supply by growing out seed from the 1986 cache. This is called the SSE RENEW program. I agreed.
So, today I received a package in the mail.
It's hard to believe that I might have been the one who sent this seed to them 36 years ago!
I'm excited about this opportunity to get this variety back into circulation.
Here are a few photos of the Warsaw Buff Pie Pumpkin.
This is one of the fat butternut shaped fruit. Indeed, the flesh and seed cavity of this squash most closely resembles a butternut.
These were from the most refined selection I had done, called "Warsaw Round," which was really just a reduced selection of genes from the original strain.
This is an oblong pumpkin shaped WBPP.
Finally, here is a photo of the foliage. Unlike the Old Timey Cornfield Pumpkin, the Warsaw Buff Pie Pumpkin does not have the silvering pattern on its leaves.
So, we shall see if this seed is pure and if it is very viable. I trust it has been in cold storage for all those years.
I left home to study in 1977 and between that fall and 1981 I only managed to grow one garden. That was in Langsing, IL, in the summer of 1980. That year I didn't grow anything but stock seeds, from the rack in the bus terminal, in Chicago, I purchased while commuting to work.
Jerreth and I were married in the spring of 1981 and we had a garden that year, but again, we didn't really have anything of heritage quality. Shucks, we didn't even get off our honeymoon until nearly June and that year, our garden was in Siloam Springs, AR. So when we hit seminary in Winnona Lake, IN, in 1982 I was really hoping to garden again! We arrived in Indiana the fall of 1982 and spring of 1983 was our first really good garden as a married couple (first really good garden I'd had since 1980). I spent hours that winter pouring over issues of Gardens for All and any other garden magazine I could lay hands on. I'm pretty sure I first heard about seed saving through Gardens for All. I believe it was in 1983 that I first requested seed for Tomato Rocky from my father, who had been growing it since 1973, back home, in NJ. In 1984 we joined the Seed Savers Exchange, which was like throwing gas on the fire of my interest in seed saving! Anyway, in the fall of 1984 I was working at Owen's Super Value, a grocery store in Warsaw, right next to Winnona Lake, where we lived and went to school (Grace Theological Seminary). I was carrying groceries one evening when I took a load to a pickup truck for an older couple. The truck had a camper top on the bed and the man opened the back for me to load the groceries into it. I was surprised when he opened the back of the camper top and there I saw that the whole back of the truck bed was FULL of squash! They were all buff colored. Some were rounded or oblong like pumpkins and some were shaped like a butternut squash. I commented on how beautiful I thought those squash were and the fellow reached in and grabbed a pumpkin shaped fruit, handing it to me as "a tip."
I asked if he had grown them and what he called them. He didn't have a name for them. His wife commented dryly, that he'd been growing them for 30 years and that every fall he'd have so many that he didn't know where to put them. So, he'd load them into the bed of his truck where, eventually they'd freeze. I enthusiastically thanked them for the squash and headed back into the store for another load of groceries, stashing my trophy in the break room with my other things
Having read about heirlooms I felt I had come upon a genuine heirloom. I was SO EXCITED that I forgot to ask for contact information on the couple and thus missed out on getting any more details about this history of this variety. But I did cut that squash within a few days and saved the seed, offering it the very first year I had a listing in the Seed Savers Exchange. I sent it to a number of gardeners, including to a friend I met through Gardens for All, Roger Quiet, a dentist in the Tulsa area. He grew it in Tulsa in 1986.
I grew this squash in Indiana. In fact, in 1985, it was one of the the very first solid foods we offered our first born when he was old enough to start on some solids. The flesh was so fine grained that we didn't have to grind it at all for him to eat it.
We grew it in Tlatlauqui, Puebla, in 1989, where it barely made it, due to the cool conditions. We grew it for years in Los Remedios, Tasquillo, Hidalgo, in the high desert of the Mexican Bajío. There, in a warmer climate, it did okay, though it could never keep up with the native Calabaza de Castilla, which was specially adapted to that climate and the 20 degree latitude sunlight. I hand pollinated most of those years, in order to keep it from getting crossed, and... inadvertently, selected for the rounder pumpkin shape, as I was partial to it.
When we returned to the USA in 2001 I brought my seed with me and from 2002-2004 we grew it in NJ, where it did very well. Then in 2005 we moved to Tahlequah, OK and grew it in our garden, here from 2006 until 2014. But we had more of a struggle with it in Oklahoma. This was partly because of the extremely variable weather we have and partly because of the abundance of squash bugs, which sometimes killed my little plants. The Warsaw Buff Pie Pumpkin, as I had named it, struggled just a tad more than the Old Timey Cornfield Pumpkin, in this climate and under these conditions. If I recall correctly, I first grew Old Timey Cornfield Pumpkin in 2009 and soon neglected WBPP. We had some bad years (drought, etc.) and my seed for WBPP got old. In order to maintain either of these fine squash I had to hand pollinate and life was hectic. In 2014 I grew WBPP for the last time and did not manage to get mature seed, and, for about 5 years I tried without success to make a crop from old seed. The seed, though sometimes sprouted, didn't have enough vigor to grow. So I had effectively lost this variety.
Meanwhile Glenn Drowns (Sandhill Preservation Center) lost his seed due to theft. Roger Quiet passed away, and had not been able to garden since the late 80s due to health problems. I couldn't find anyone with viable seed.
In 2016 we had a visit from some representatives of the Seed Savers Exchange. When they were preparing to drive down from Iowa they asked if they could bring any seeds that we had donated, which we might like to have from their storage. I immediately mentioned the Warsaw Buff Pie Pumpkin. They located some seed and brought it. Though it was getting late, as soon as they headed back to IA I planted a sizeable patch of that seed, only to discover that it was crossed up. The plants looked exactly like I expected but the fruit was long necked and very different from what I originally grew. So, I kept looking for anyone who might have seed. This winter I had some more correspondence with Sarah Straate, the SSE seed historian and their new coordinator, Josie Flatgard. They informed me that they had previously given me seed from a 2008 grow out (if I recall correctly). They still had a limited amount of seed from 1986! After some correspondence Josie asked if I would like to replenish their seed supply by growing out seed from the 1986 cache. This is called the SSE RENEW program. I agreed.
So, today I received a package in the mail.
It's hard to believe that I might have been the one who sent this seed to them 36 years ago!
I'm excited about this opportunity to get this variety back into circulation.
Here are a few photos of the Warsaw Buff Pie Pumpkin.
This is one of the fat butternut shaped fruit. Indeed, the flesh and seed cavity of this squash most closely resembles a butternut.
These were from the most refined selection I had done, called "Warsaw Round," which was really just a reduced selection of genes from the original strain.
This is an oblong pumpkin shaped WBPP.
Finally, here is a photo of the foliage. Unlike the Old Timey Cornfield Pumpkin, the Warsaw Buff Pie Pumpkin does not have the silvering pattern on its leaves.
So, we shall see if this seed is pure and if it is very viable. I trust it has been in cold storage for all those years.