A Garden Revelation

We are inundated with squash plants this year. One of the things we learned last year is that squash is happy to grow here. This is sadly not the case with all vegetables (alas for the leeks), but squash can handle our climate. So we figured we should roll with that.

A. planted some saved squash seeds* back in January as an experiment to see if they would perform like a volunteer and come up early. They did.

Then I planted half a dozen out in the pasture.

And we have at least three volunteers in the back garden where we had many volunteers come up last year thanks to an old compost pile.

Last year's volunteer squash that ate the back yard. (It got even bigger than this in the end.)

All together, I'd say we have at least 14 squash plants. And as everyone knows, squash plants are very, very prolific. It is not unusual to get half a dozen squash on one plant. So 14 plants times 6 squash per plant is . . .

Well, it's a LOT of squash. Way more than I would be able to eat as winter squash in one season. Or even give away, I suspect.

However.

At least a couple of our plants are from seeds we saved from Rafael's calabaza that he gave us last year. We know, thanks to Rafael, those are calabazas when allowed to ripen fully on the vine, at which point they are a hard-skinned winter squash. But they are calabacitas when harvested at an immature stage in the summer, in which form they are cooked like zucchini.

None of the calabacitas have appeared on those plants yet, but it made me think: If the calabaza can be eaten at an immature stage, why not other winter squash? Like, say, the unidentifiable volunteer in the middle of my tomato plants that already has two baseball-sized squash on it?

Why not, indeed.

So I pulled those two squash off, chopped them up, and sauteed them in olive oil.

TA DA! Bonus garden vegetables!

I had to remove some of the seed part, because even the immature seeds in a winter squash are fairly big at an early stage, and I think this would only work when the skins are still thin and tender enough to be easily poked with a fingernail, but still. Early garden vegetables from a plant that I have not had to tend, and a way to use some of the avalanche of squash before it smothers us this fall.

Garden victory is mine. At least, when it comes to the squash.

* Every single one of the seeds we saved from various varieties last year and planted this year germinated. I purchased exactly one packet of squash seeds this year--Delicata--and of the six seeds I planted, only ONE germinated. So annoying.