Mother Earth News 2005 by Unknown

Author:Unknown
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub

Beautiful Buttercups

There is a perfect winter squash for every climate and palate, but finding one for your area is not a simple quest - unless you are a Midwesterner. “Buttercups have always been the precious ones around here,” Diffley says. After waiting 20 years for an improvement in the old ‘Burgess’ variety, Diffley found ‘Bonbon,’ a 2005 All America Selections (AAS) winner from Johnny’s Selected Seeds, and says it’s worth making the switch from open pollinated (OP) to hybrid. “It’s uniform, vigorous and has the same good flavor of ‘Burgess,’ only better.”

The Asian version of buttercup, kabocha squash, also has many fans, as do three C. maxima varieties - ‘Potimarron,’ ‘Hokkaido’ and ‘Red Kuri’ - that probably started out as the same thing and changed a bit as they traveled the world. Subtle chestnut flavor is this strain’s fame, whereas fast-maturing, North Dakota-bred ‘Gold Nugget’ is still endearing itself to gardeners with its orange softball-sized fruits 40 years after earning the 1966 silver AAS medal.

Buttery texture and user-friendly size aside, all of these squashes (and those of the C. pepo group) are much sought after by squash vine borers - pests that can decimate small garden plantings, but are not as bad in big fields of squash, where the mother moths have more plants to choose from as they seek host plants upon which to lay their eggs.

Both C. maxima and C. pepo squashes have the type of stem that squash borers love - wide and hollow in the middle, with a thick lining of spongy parenchyma, the preferred food of hungry squash borer larvae. However, C. maxima squashes have a way of defending themselves that the C. pepo lack: They vigorously develop supplemental roots where their vines touch the ground. You can improve the borer tolerance of long-vined buttercups by dumping a shovelful of soil over places where you see roots trying to get established in the soil. See “Stick It to Borers,” later in this article for other strategies aimed at managing this pest.

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