Autumn and spring get mixed up for the seasonal eater when squash like this Crown Prince store so brilliantly.
It was grown last year and harvested in the autumn. We stored it in the cool garage.
On Sunday it contributed to a delicious, silky soup with oven roasted red peppers and onions. Just garnish with a sprinkling of chopped chives and and then eat with chunks of home made bread.
An organic garden needs a constant supply of natural fertility if it is to produce food without chemical fertilisers.
I believe that it is possible to garden effectively without animal manures, but when manure is available, it makes sense to get some and store it away.
For the majority of plants, fresh manure would be a hazard. The ammonia within the manure would scorch leaves and retard growth. It is best to store manure for at least a year so that it is well rotted before being used.
I may use some to layer up the compost because fresh manure is said to act as an 'activator' speeding the process of break down. I will dig our large holes in the manure pile early summer, fill these with reused potting compost and plant squashes into the holes. Each hole must be big enough to let the squash roots grow unhindered. If they penetrate into the fresh manure, their growth will be affected.
The advantage of planting into the fresh manure in this way is that the warmth from the decaying manure will encourage the plants to grow.
Here we have a fresh delivery of horse manure from a local stable. It will be left inside my straw bale wall until next spring.
Nature has its own way of storing the golden autumn sun for use during the long months of winter.
Squash look like pumpkins - but with the huge advantage of tasting fabulous.
We have planted Butternut squash most years and sometimes had outstanding results with many squash stored by the autumn.
Mike introduced us to Crown Prince last year - we ate it and wanted more! So, this year, along with Butternut, we planted Crown Prince. The skin, when ripe, is a lovely duck egg blue, and when cut, the flesh is an exquisite orange.
Both squashes have been planted into rotting leaves retained with straw bales. A large hole was dug out of the leaves and filled with compost before the squash (careful
ly brought on in the greenhouse at home) were planted out. We added organic granulated chicken manure pellets to give the young plants an extra boost.
Spare squash plants were dotted among the sweetcorn and climbing beans to create the 'three sisters' bed.
The wet weather this summer meant that squashes have got very little watering from us. The foliage of the two squash varieties has filled the planting areas completely and is snaking through and up the sweetcorn creating a marvellous jungle effect. No plants are suffering from mildew so far.
It is often the case that one variety thrives one year, while another variety of the same species fails to. This year, the Crown Prince have flourished - while many of the Butternut squash fruits have succumbed to a virus. The Butternut fruits have grown, but then turned a withered, chocolate brown.
So, this demonstrates that it makes good sense not to 'put all your eggs in one basket' and plant a number of varieties. If we had relied solely on Butternut we would have had a miserable harvest!
Next year, we will also look out for another Mike hot tip - 'Nutty Delica'. Another squash variety he rates highly courtesy of Joy Larkham.
Our squash are not as far ahead as others we've seen, but we still have signs that fruit are set. Last year was a disappointing one for us with squash: our young plants were attacked by slugs and the cold wet summer never gave them chance to produce anything worth having. Of course, Mike on the next plot had a surfeit!
To ensure that the plants don't go on into the autumn setting small fruits that won't produce useful squashes, we pinch out the growing tips after three or four are set, as this on is.
Hopefully, then, we'll bet a bumper crop of squash that will keep us going in soups and as oven roasted vegetables until early spring.
An F1 squash: that sounds like a horrible accident involving racing cars. No - it's a specially bred, big kinda pumpkin. 2008 was a miserable year for squash. Well, at least it was for us.
The cold, wet summer slowed the plants down and they never fruited.
Squash will fruit towards the end of the summer and into early autumn on the end of long, snaking runners. Or not, as was the case for us this year.
But, of course, better gardeners than us did achieve success with squash. Mikes crop seemed to reach that of biblical surplus. He was trampling them underfoot at one point. I saw this with my own eyes.
Here's 'the proof of the pudding'. This is one of his Crown Prince squashes. It is an F1 variety, so having the advantage of great vigour, but no use for collecting seeds from for next year. F1 seeds do not 'come true'. This beauty has duck egg blue skin and a dense flesh with chestnut flavour. Quite delicious.
We owe a huge debt of gratitude to the native American gardeners who transformed our gardening and eating habits.
They gave us potatoes, tomatoes, maize, peppers and chillies. If it is difficult to imagine how we fed ourselves before Europeans visited the new world, it is because we didn't. Carbohydrates before those times were limited to beans, cereals and root crops in British kitchens.
A particular favourite American in the autumn garden is the sprawling butternut squash. Planted from saved seeds (originally scooped some years ago from a Tesco organic butternut squash), the squash always seems slow to 'get going'. It only begins to flower in late August and it is in mid to late September when the baby fruits form. We have made the mistake in previous years of allowing squashes to grow too large. By doing this they have sapped the energy of the plant and we have fruits too large to be practicable in the kitchen. By taking squashes smaller, we hope to encourage more to be set and to grow on to harvest. The plants will keep ion sending their long stems across the garden and so these have 'stopped' by pinching out the growing tips to concentrate the plants energies on small fruits already formed.
We have begun harvesting and have brought two small fruits home. They will be stored in net bags in the shed until their skins go a beautiful sandy pink.
Their flesh, by then, will be dense and orange - with a sweet nutty flavour that is much more intense than that of pumpkins.
A favourite winter soup!
