Pumpkin Landrace

2022-10-13T07:00:00Z
I am considering doing a pumpkin (pepo varieties) landrace next year and was wondering if anyone had any input on if this is a viable thing to do or how I should go about it. Typically I never grow pepos because of pest pressure.

Some of the goals I am looking to achieve are:
-Earliness - to avoid high pest pressure that comes on later in the season. The earliest varieties I’ve seen are around 80 days.
-Pest tolerance - however much is possible for pepos to withstand the initial onset of squash bugs and squash vine borers. Vigor will likely play into this, as well as the ability to set roots at leaf nodules.
-Flavor - the biggest reason I want to do this is because I have nostalgia for the sugar pie pumpkins my mother grew when I was a child. To me there is something in the flavor and smell of pumpkins that maximas and moschatas lack, especially when making pumpkin pie.

Varieties I am considering using:
Sugar Baby
Winter Luxury
Ohama
Idaho Gem - which is supposedly mature at 70 days - very early
Big Red California Sugar

I see that Adaptive Seeds has a Pumpkin Pie Party which is a mix of 11 varieties they let cross. They’ve basically done the first step for me but their conditions are very different than mine and they do not say what they’ve been selecting for besides taste.

Any thoughts or suggestions on this?

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Julia D
Are you considering adding acorn or delicata into the mix? I’m not into pumpkins at this point, grew sugar baby last year, tasted blah, bought a pie pumpkin at the store and it tasted bitter. So I think that a tasty early pumpkin landrace will be popular because people love pumpkins and maybe commercial breeders have ruined the flavor by selecting for looks/size/halloween. Or maybe that’s just in my climate.

Lowell M
I do not think so. I have only grown acorn once. It was thelma sanders and I remembering it having light yellow flesh and being mildly sweet. I really like the dark orange colored pumpkins and the netted ones appeal to me as well so those will probably end up being my goal on appearance. That’s interesting about your sugar baby experience. It has been a long time since I’ve had one so I can’t really compare. I hope they still taste as I remember here.

Ryder Tstrong text
I think it’s a great idea too! No suggestions though, we only had decent results growing pepos for the first time this year and the only pumpkin was decorative.

Jesse I
Retzer gold has been really good for me in very short season in southern Finland. Dont have much to compare for how good it’s compared to others, but I prefere maxima/moschata myself. It atleast has hulles seeds as a extra feature that might good compination. It’s quite fast for it’s size (6-10kg). For me it’s been about 90 days from seed to colour change and that’s with week lost due to slow growth after sowing because of very cool period so hotter climate might be closer to 80 days. We dont have any of those pests so cant say anything about that.

Lowell M
Thank you for the suggestion! I’ve never seen it in a catalog in the states but I’ll have a look around. I was also thinking it would be cool to have a good pumpkin that also has hullless seeds but that might be ambitious for the first few years while I’m just trying to get something that thrives and survives the insect pressure.

I’m going to try this from the Experimental Farm Network this year:

https://store.experimentalfarmnetwork.org/products/maxidiwiac-buffalo-bird-woman-summer-squash

I’m also going to try Ronde de Nice, because even though it’s included in that landrace, it looks awesome all on its own:

This is one of the reviews of it: “I am super excited to find this variety. I’ve grown different varieties of zucchini over the years and by far this is the best ever. Here in Hawaii we have fruit flies, cut worms and every other evil creature out there that destroys Squash. For some reason this variety is bug resistant. The flavor is amazing. Super high-yield. So easy to grow. I will definitely be buying more seeds.”

So maybe it’ll be resistant to your insects, too? Unless of course your pests are hungry chipmunks, in which case, I have no idea what to do. :wink:

Round summer squashes seem to mature into pumpkin-shaped winter squashes. And tasty summer squashes seem to mature into even tastier winter squashes. So if you want earliness and great flavor in your pepo pumpkins, adding round summer squashes to your landrace is likely to give you both.

I don’t think summer squash flavour is related to how they taste as winter squash. Those that I have let mature have been mediocre at most. Haven’t tried ronde de nice as mature fruit, but I have one round variety that tastes arleast as good if not better as summer squash and that doesn’t have anything to eat as mature fruit. It’s just hard shell that needs saw to cut open and flesh is so thin that there is nothing to eat even it’s edible. It’s quite white flesh that usually means it’s not very flavourful.

OH EFN had some tantalizing squash this year. I ended up getting the long Maycock selection. Please let me know how the maxidiwaic selection goes. I didn’t get it because I want really orange pumpkins on the inside and out, and thought this was more like marrows. I have 3 pepo projects going next year so I couldn’t take on another one due to lack of isolation spaces.

This has been my experience as well. Summer squash as winter squash were not deep orange inside and had a different flavor.

If you want tasty orange pumpkins, Tatume tastes delicious as summer squash, and even better when it’s more mature. Yummmm.

Huh! My experience so far has been that the summer squash I find tastiest and most flavorful are the tastiest and most flavorful as winter squash. I find they have the same flavor to me, it’s just that it’s mild when unripe and strong when ripe.

That said, I have found tasty winter squash that are thoroughly meh as summer squash. My plan is to taste every plant as both and save seeds from everything that tastes good both ways.

Last year, I had one plant with an interesting phenotype that was not very tasty as summer squash, and I let the fruits grow to maturity because I was assuming they would taste better as winter squash. Nah. They were edible, but the least tasty winter squash fruits I got from my garden. If I’d known, I could have ripped it out and replanted something else in its space!

So my plan from now on is to leave the first (and maybe second) fruit from every plant to grow into a winter squash, taste the second or third fruit from every plant as a summer squash, and if it’s not good as summer squash, harvest the other fruits and pull out the plant and put a new seed in its place.

I’m also thinking I’ll pull out the plants that take the longest to produce their first female flower. I’ll probably have some arbitrary standard like “I’ll pull out anything that doesn’t have a female flower by the time the first plant to grow a female flower has three fruits on it,” or something.

I’m looking at a photo of the mature squash on Victory Seeds and it is a pale yellow inside. That’s a no for me :slight_smile: I desire that deeep orange.

My experience with pepo summer squash is that they typically are only good as summer squash or stuffed as marrows. But I want pie pumpkins that are deep orange and aromatic, like I remember them when I was a kid. These were also pepo varieties and we never ate them as summer squash, only as pumpkins. I’ve never used maxima as summer squash but have eaten some tromboncino as summer squash and it is good.

Deeeeeep orange sounds delicious! Lots of great carotene, as Joseph Lofthouse keeps saying. :smiley:

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