Every year we cover a strip of ground under the trees of our young food forest with cardboard to eradicate perennial weed and then plant squash through holes in the cardboard. Later, this space will be planted with perennial herbs and vegetables, but in the meantime it gives us a lot of space to try new varieties of squashes and an opportunity to select favourites for the future. Just like last year, we filmed a video about the varieties we grew and how they performed. Besides our favourite from last year (butternut ‘Harrier’) we grew 7 more: spaghetti squash ‘Small Wonder’, hubbard ‘Baby Blue, banana squash ‘North Georgia Candy Roaster’, ‘Delicata’, naked seeded ‘Penelopa’, mini-pumpkin ‘Gold Speck’ and the mysterious Ukrainian ‘Chersonskaya’. Besides overall yield, it is for example also very interesting to see the difference between plants grown in the ground and the two we grew on the compost heaps.
I’m always on the lookout for new recommendations: What are your favourites to grow?