Silver Seed

Last summer the winter squashes and pumpkins were located in a place where watering them was not a feasible option. Many years this is not a problem since the rainfall is adequate for the hills to store up enough water to last to the next rain. But not so this year. At the critical time when most of them were setting blossoms, it was hot and dry and worst of all the night temperatures did not drop below 75 degrees for many nights in a row. The blossoms of most of the pumpkins and squashes expired and fell off the vines under such unrelenting heat and dryness.

It was a very bad crop of a very important vegetable. Alas, most people only come into contact with members of the Cucurbita genus as Jack-o-lanterns or fall decorations. But the the self-sufficient hardscrabble farmstead they are an important group of plants. Here I should say that the term 'pumpkin' does not identify a species of plant or a particular vegetable. A pumpkin is a squash that is generally roundish, ribbed, and orange (but not always). But what we call pumpkins are several different species of Cucurbita. The very large prize winning pumpkins (such as Atlantic Giant and Big Max) are Cucurbita Maxima. The most typical Jack-o-lantern pumpkin is the Connecticut Field Pumpkin which is C. Pepo. And many of those small dark orange sugar pumpkins used for pies are C. Moschata.

If that were not enough, the C. Pepo species, those Halloween pumpkins, also includes zucchini, yellow crookneck, and patty pan summer squashes. Acorn squashes are also C. Pepo. Many of the small sweet pie pumpkins are C. Pepo but some are C. Moschata and are the same species as butternut squash. And those tiny squashes no bigger than your fist, the 'buttercup' squashes, are C. Maxima just like the monster 500 lb. giant pumpkins. Hubbard squash are also C. Maxima.

There are many other species of edible squash such as C. Mixta and C. Melopepo. Ornamental gourds are of the genus Cucurbita as are the great bewildering number of species of wild gourds from which they were all derived.

One very different but very useful species is the C. Argyrosperma, a very long time heirloom squash in the Appalachians, the Cushaw. Cushaws are large gourd shaped squash with very fine grained flesh ideal for pies. They are long maturing and slow growing. This year, as they most often do in bad years, they soldiered on produced a good crop of fruits in spite of the bad conditions. The vine pictured above was drying up in the heat, but set and matured the green striped squash none the less.

An excellent producer and arguably the best tasting of the squashes, the Cushaw has one serious drawback: They don't keep very long. All winter squash keep best in warm dry conditions. Some of the Queensland Blue squash of the previous years have kept 18 months and were still in good condition. Alas, one is lucky to get the Cushaw to keep two months from their harvest in late October.

Here is the last Cushaw of the season cut open to be cooked for Christmas dessert.

This one was about 22" long and weighed about 12 lbs. Of course such a tenacious specimen of a vegetable deserves to have its genes preserved and passed along and I kept all the largest seeds so that they can grow in many gardens this coming season.

You can perhaps see where this squash gets is specie name Argyrosperma which is Greek for Silver Seed.

The Solstice Garden

Happy Solstice!

There was nothing much to say on this blog from midsummer on because the garden was in such a state of flux and all in all it was one of the least successful years of gardening since this particular garden was established some seventeen years ago.

The climate is changing. The first ten years of gardening this spot the weather was what was to be expected for the temperate rain forest, rains all summer at more or less regular intervals. But progressively for the past seven years the summers have become drier and drier after midsummer. A garden planned for natural rainfall but gets none soon dries up like a potsherd.

About mid August a consultation with the garden made it clear that the amount of garden to be had was equal to the amount of water to be had.

Now the rub is this, about 25 feet beyond the fence shown in the above photo and some 14 feet straight down is a cool creek that runs out of the deep hollows of the forest and has water in it all year long no matter the rainfall. Yet when water is 14 feet at the bottom of a cliff-like bank, for all practical purposes it might as well be on the moon. Through the years here I've had a series of gasoline powered pumps that all worked for a while. Not only are they annoyingly noisy, but they deliver their water all at once which must be used right then or stored in a tank of trough for use later. But mostly internal combustion engines and I hate each other with an honest and soul deep hatred. The damn things self-destruct and I have a row of them I have blown up over the years.

I know what comes to the mind of my fellow Ludites is a ram pump. They are not necessarily what they are cracked up to be. In this particular case by the time the water is needed in the garden, the flow of the creek is too low to effectively operate the pump. At any rate, I'm always surprised at the extent to which the solution to such problems as this must needs end up with us standing to the side and watching things happen (the ram pump pumping water) rather than us materially participating in it. So I came across this very cheap (about $28) pitcher pump. Two cedar posts were set in the very center of the garden and a 1" PVC pipe buried to the edge of the precipice and then run to a pool in the creek. At first it didn't work, then it occurred to me to put a foot valve at the end of the pipe and now with modest effort it delivers six gallons a minute.

Some time was spent going over my notes of the past few dry years. I modified the plantings a bit and took my best shot for a late summer garden. I will be going over most of those techniques in detail as the gardening year progresses but the gist is that by using a modification of the intensive planting patterns and judicially watering and hand tending, the garden yielded tomatoes (from rooted suckers broken off the failed main crop of tomatoes), peppers, cabbages, broccoli, radishes, lettuce, snap beans of various types, kale, carrots and quite a list of other things all in the short season left after mid August.

In this mild winter many things are wintering over. There's still chard, kale, carrots, beets, garlic, onions, and such still being harvested here at solstice.

A bed of garlic has survived 0 degrees F with a few leaves bitten by the frost but the whole stalk still good to harvest as green garlic.

A winter turnip amid the green cover crop.

Now its a new solar year and time to reflect on what will happen in the garden this year even here when it is still long before the time when the garden is 'all hope and no weeds.'