Farewell My Butternut!

More garden cleaning, this time in Smith.  I’m performing this task a little at a time to allow for proper good-byes for remembering our time together.  Too many partings all at once from these familiar friends is a burden.  I need to space this task out.  Today, I pulled the Butternut squash vines.  I can’t tell you what satisfaction these vines gave me this season.  Watching and tending this squash was one of 2011’s most fun and invigorating garden endeavors.  I planted four hills of Butternut squash in Smith at the feet of a corn patch, just like the Indians showed the Pilgrims. 

Ready for harvest

I’ll be frank.  I’ve never liked members of the Sweet Orange Mealy-Fleshed Vegetable Family, sweet potatoes, winter squash, pumpkins.  I don’t even care for pumpkin pie.  So why grow Butternut Squash and why am I thrilled with such a large harvest?  Because I want to school myself in the ways of self-sufficiency, at least with food.  I wanted, as much as possible in a 15 x 15 plot (Smith), to grow things for now and also for later, so I planted winter squash, a keeper.  I sowed four seeds in each hill, way too much for this small space, but I’ll thin them down later I told myself.  Yeah.  Right!  I did no such thing.  I let ’em grow, let ’em all sprawl.  Make yourselves at home, boys!  The last two years I experimented with bush winter squash, bred for small gardens, but it didn’t grow well and I got virtually no squash.  I made good and sure that wouldn’t happen again.

Treasure among the marigolds

I recklessly chose a traditional variety, Waltham, that spreads, spreads, spreads willy-nilly wherever it has a mind to go.   Sixteen vines, one per seed, is enough to cover all of Smith and spill out beyond.  At times this summer I played Border Control Cop, asking the vines, none with proper papers for inter-gardenal travel, to stay in their own land.  They ended up sprawling over half of this garden, completely covering one of its two paths, surrounding, but only slightly infiltrating, the corn patch, running roughshod over carrots and leeks, and covering the former garlic patch.  (I pulled garlic in early July, ahead of the squash vine hordes.)

Browsing among the leeks

I continued to be amazed, from late July through mid-September, how vigorous the vines were, and how they continued to blossom and set fruit.  I must have done something right or else all the details, soil, weather, variety of squash, suited this area perfectly.  I learned a valuable lesson about harvesting squash.  I was puzzled as soon as they began to look ready when I should pick them.  Most guides I use said to wait until the squash was a deep tan, but also to wait until the vines died down.  Since mine were hardy for so long, I left them where they were.  I checked a couple of squash now and then for rot, but they felt solid.  The day I did harvest, I was checking more carefully and found three that had become very soft, so I picked them all right then and most were nice and firm.  My mistake was not leaving them on the vine too long, but not heavily mulching underneath the fruit.  Had they been on straw, they would not have gone bad.

We shall come rejoicing, bringing in the Squash.

Dear squash vines, thank you for all you’ve given me, the joy of watching you grow, and a bountiful harvest we will be enjoying through Thanksgiving and Christmas and hopefully, into next year.

About literarylee

I sling words for a living. Always have, always will. Some have been interesting and fun; most not. These days, I write the fun words early in the morning before the adults are up and make me eat my Cream of Wheat.
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