« April 2020 | Main | July 2020 »
I planted seeds from a Pandemic spaghetti squash. It was about the only fresh vegetable on the shelves in late March.
Here is a nice-looking unripe ("green") squash that I harvested from one of the plants
It was 3" x 2 1/2" and the seeds inside were formed, but still soft. It was delicious and I have ordered some heritage seeds and will be growing these from now on.
I posted a picture of my squash dinner HERE.
Butternut is not my favorite squash, but it is slowly changing my life.
Spaghetti squash is the cucurbita buy to cook and puree the pulp to use in place of water in my favorite bread dough recipe. And spaghetti squash flowers are the ones I like best to air fry on top of flatbread and almost an casserole. I like the small tender leaves of spaghetti squash sliced into soup or added to pasta sauce.
However, for a short while this spring it became a challenge to find much of any food at all in the local markets, so when I saw a butternut squash for sale I bought it quickly. It would be interesting comparing its growth habits with those of my zucchini, yellow straight and my beloved spaghetti squash.
...
Speaking of which for photos of my ready to eat yellow straightneck and spaghetti squash (I like them green) Pictures of my Babies
...
Interesting may have been an understatement. These plants were like thugs in the garden. Whereas up to this time my growing had been 90% indoors, in water, it became obvious pretty quickly that the butternut seedlings would have to go outdoors and fast.
So I wiped out my piggy bank buying potting mix and devised a system of hardening off the "houseplants" using what I call Quad planters to get them ready to go outdoors. The name comes from my use of a 4-part pot-in-pot method. I use a mason jar to keep 3 nested disposable beverage cups stable, drilling holes in the base of the inner cup and putting one small rock between each plastic cup to keep them from sticking together.
Here is a young butternut squash in one of my Quads, shortly after coming out of the AeroGarden planter.
This one fit in a half cup wide-mouth mason jar. Here it is later, in potting mix:
And here, outside on the ground, with some of its friends and its first flower.
And they just keep growing.
And here is its first baby squash:
xxxxxxxxx
Jute may be a nutrient-packed superfood, but it is also a fun plant to grow, especially in the desert in summer. As microgreens, the leaves are good-tasting and tender, but unlike most other microgreens, once the seedling are established it is possible to clone new plants by rooting cuttings in water in less than 5 days.
The jute I am growing now is Corchorus olitorius. I bought the seed from an Etsy seller called PanAsiaHeirloom. It was one of the smartest purchases I have ever made.
One thing that makes jute a little different is that if you plant just one seed and let it grow without interference it will grow straight up. In my photo below, one very root-bound jute plant is about a foot tall. I cut off about 4" from the top and stripped the unnecessary leaves off (and ate them!) to prepare the stem for rooting. This caused the lower part of the plant to bush out.
I root a lot of different kinds of plants indoors in water and have developed a system for helping them make a transition from water indoors to outdoor planters with potting mix. I root the cuttings in narrow glass vials under grow lights. When the roots are healthy and big enough to plant I put them in contraptions that I call my quads. I have water quads and dirt quads. They are 4-part nested plastic cups. The inner cup has holes drilled in the bottom to ensure good drainage. The next cup holds the liquid. The third cup has a label with each plant's history, and the outer cup is a mason jar which serves as a base to keep the plant from tipping over.
For the dirt quads I put a coffee filter inside the pre-drilled cup before adding potting mix. This helps it drain cleaner and also makes it easier to remove the plant when it is ready to go into a bigger pot outside.
Some plant stay in the quads forever. My first quad contained a spaghetti squash plant that bloomed and bore fruit indoors right in the 12 oz quad. Of course, I did have to hand-pollenate it.