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Vegetable Varieties - Winter Squash

These hard-shelled squash are grown for harvest in fall and storage through early winter months. Acorn and Butternut are the two most popular types, but the group includes many others, such as buttercup, spaghetti, hubbard, banana, marrow, and turban. Some of the pumpkins, such as cushaw and Kentucky Field, are treated as winter or storage squash. An odd assortment of local squash called “aboveground sweet potatoes” fall into this group.

Most of these squash have strong vining plants. The fruit range in size from the small acorn and hybrid Early Butternut to the large banana and hubbards. Winter squash planted in spring along with summer squash mature in midsummer. These fruit lack the eating quality of those produced on plants from seeds planted in late June or early July along with Halloween pumpkins.

Delay harvest until the fruit rind is very hard and vines begin to die. Immature fruit of most varieties are tasteless. Yellow acorn varieties are edible at all stages of maturity. All winter squash are pollinated by bees and require 60 to 70 days from pollination to maturity.

Varieties

Early Butternut Hybrid—mature fruit are tan; excellent flavor and texture; stores well; viney but not overly vigorous; AAS 1979.

Sweet Mama—hybrid; dark green; 2 to 3 pounds; flattened; round; Buttercup type fruit; orange flesh; stores well; vigorous vines; AAS 1979.

Table Queen—acorn type; small fruit; dark green; deeply ridged; smooth and hard; yellow flesh; bush type plant.

Vegetable Spaghetti—fruit 8 to 10 inches long, 3 pounds; yellow when mature; cooked flesh is greenish-white, spaghetti-like strands; flavor is bland; prolific vine; 90 days; orange-fleshed type also available.

Waltham Butternut—large, tan fruit; 3 pounds; uniform shape; orange flesh; stores well; vigorous vine; AAS 1970.