{"id":5194,"date":"2011-09-30T07:21:59","date_gmt":"2011-09-30T11:21:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thelifeliterary.com\/?p=5194"},"modified":"2011-09-30T14:09:13","modified_gmt":"2011-09-30T18:09:13","slug":"farewell-my-butternut","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.thelifeliterary.com\/?p=5194","title":{"rendered":"Farewell My Butternut!"},"content":{"rendered":"

More garden cleaning, this time in Smith<\/a>.\u00a0 I’m performing this task a little at a time to allow for proper good-byes\u00a0for remembering our time together.\u00a0 Too many partings all at once from these familiar friends is a burden.\u00a0 I need to space this task out.\u00a0 Today, I pulled the Butternut squash vines.\u00a0 I can’t tell you what satisfaction these vines gave me this season.\u00a0 Watching and tending this squash was one of 2011’s most fun and invigorating garden endeavors.\u00a0 I planted four hills of Butternut squash in Smith at the feet of a corn patch, just like the Indians showed the Pilgrims.\u00a0<\/p>\n

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Ready for harvest<\/p><\/div>\n

I’ll be frank.\u00a0 I’ve never liked members of the Sweet Orange Mealy-Fleshed Vegetable Family, sweet potatoes, winter squash, pumpkins.\u00a0 I don’t even care for pumpkin pie.\u00a0 So why grow Butternut Squash and why am I thrilled with such a large harvest?\u00a0 Because I want to school myself in the ways of self-sufficiency, at least with food.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 I sowed four seeds in each hill, way too much for this small space, but I’ll thin them down later I told myself.\u00a0 Yeah.\u00a0 Right!\u00a0 I did no such thing.\u00a0 I let ’em grow, let ’em all sprawl.\u00a0 Make yourselves at home, boys!\u00a0 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.\u00a0 I made good and sure that wouldn’t happen again.<\/p>\n

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Treasure among the marigolds<\/p><\/div>\n

I recklessly chose a traditional variety, Waltham, that spreads, spreads, spreads willy-nilly wherever it has a mind to go.\u00a0\u00a0 Sixteen vines, one per seed, is enough to cover all of Smith and spill out beyond.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 (I pulled garlic in early July, ahead of the squash vine hordes.)<\/p>\n

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Browsing among the leeks<\/p><\/div>\n

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.\u00a0 I must have done something right or else all the details, soil, weather, variety of squash, suited this area perfectly.\u00a0 I learned a valuable lesson about harvesting squash.\u00a0 I was puzzled as soon as they began to look ready when I should pick them.\u00a0 Most guides I use said to wait until the squash was a deep tan, but also to wait until the vines died down.\u00a0 Since mine were hardy for so long, I left them where they were.\u00a0 I checked a couple of squash now and then for rot, but they felt solid.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 My mistake was not leaving them on the vine too long, but not heavily mulching underneath the fruit.\u00a0 Had they been on straw, they would not have gone bad.<\/p>\n

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We shall come rejoicing, bringing in the Squash.<\/p><\/div>\n

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\u00a0through Thanksgiving and Christmas and hopefully, into next year.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

More garden cleaning, this time in Smith.\u00a0 I’m performing this task a little at a time to allow for proper good-byes\u00a0for remembering our time together.\u00a0 Too many partings all at once from these familiar friends is a burden.\u00a0 I need … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[69],"tags":[655,815,70,246,825,816],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.thelifeliterary.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5194"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.thelifeliterary.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.thelifeliterary.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.thelifeliterary.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.thelifeliterary.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5194"}],"version-history":[{"count":13,"href":"http:\/\/www.thelifeliterary.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5194\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5254,"href":"http:\/\/www.thelifeliterary.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5194\/revisions\/5254"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.thelifeliterary.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5194"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.thelifeliterary.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5194"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.thelifeliterary.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5194"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}