Turkey Tracks: October 20, 2012
Blue Hubbard Squash
I’ve been fascinated with Blue Hubbard squash for some years now.
Last year, I planted seeds, but nothing came of them. This year we had a very rainy, cool June, and I planted cucumbers and zucchini about five times before any of the plants really got going. The zucchini finally produced enough for us to enjoy zucchini on a regular basis. The cukes finally produced two small fruits in early September. (Fortunately neighbor Susan McBride had plenty of cukes in her amazing hoop houses at Golden Brook Farm, so I made some of Sandor Ellison Katz’s New York pickles from his WILD FERMENTATION–and they were absolutely delicious.)
And, I kept planting Blue Hubbard squash in the long front bed where I also planted strawberries for next year. Here’s what the vine looked like in late August–the pic is taken from the upper porch, looking down.
Nice, I thought. Decorative even. Lots of blossoms, too, but… Then I noticed a pale growth underneath the leaves on the lower right, up next to the porch.
It was a BIG fruit. Still green, still not blue, but a BIG fruit. I held my breath about frost and left it alone. I picked it about a week ago and put it into the garage to “sugar off” for a bit. Squash almost always need to sit for a bit of time after harvest to get really sweet.
Here’s how BIG my Blue Hubbard got:
It’s as big as a chicken. Bigger even.
Back in the day, folks would cut a hunk out of a Blue Hubbard for dinner and just leave the rest in a cool place for the next meal. I’m sure I posted a blog on roasting one I bought last year–which is what I will do with this one. I’ll cut it in half, scoop out the seeds, roast it in the oven (face down), scoop out the flesh and store it in meal-sized portions in the freezer. It makes a nice pie, too. The flesh is mellow, nutty, and lovely.
The squash I planted in the blue tubs also did REALLY well this summer. Here’s a pic from sometime in, probably, July.
We harvested a box full of squash: two beautiful little pie pumpkins, eight or ten butternuts, a buttercup, five or six delicatas, and an assortment of small blue hubbards that are probably edible. I’ll plant squash here again.
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