I grew four plants of a highly recommended squash variety this year, and ended up with 4 very different looking types of squash from the same seed packet. It seems this was the result of an accidental cross pollination, with quite interesting results that provided a useful learning opportunity.
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44 Comments
First!
This year I've had a variety of winter squash produce different shaped/coloured fruits on each plant, plus their growth habit was more like bush than the trailing/climbing they should've been.
Some of my F1 Red Alert tomatoes produced orange fruits in lieu of red.
All the the F1 Suncherry Premium tomato seeds I bought produced the exactly the same vastly inferior F2 plants that I previously got when checking how true saved seed plants were.
And in 2019/2020? there were numerous packets of courgette seeds sold that had crossed with poisonous ornamental gourds and eating these courgettes made people I'll. I checked my seeds and found 2 of the affected packets, but hadn't sown them.
Plus I've read of numerous people getting wrong varieties in the packets. I have lost a lot of trust in seed producers/suppliers, and if you complain most offer to send you another packet! (too late to sow and probably just the same). One seed company prints the use by date/batch on the end of their packets that you tear off to open them, then request that information if they fail.
so the crown prince is the (F1) variety?
and it cannot reproduce ?
looking at the (delicata) looks like it took the path of zucchini )or that's what mine did! the bumps remind me of our( warty wart )pumpkin very strange..
I wish I could blame the( F1) but ? who knows…
I still don't understand this f1 hybrid
so it doesn't need pollination? weird .
any thoughts on( grapes) without seeds have you ever eaten any (taste great) but are they as nutritional?
watermelons similar..? no seed wtf
it seems odd
great content as always..
if you decide to keep your on squash seed , hand pollination would be the best way to stop cross pollination , and protecting flower during receptive period in a mesh or cloth bag . . it handy that squash are one of the easiest plants to hand pollinate
This was an incredibly interesting accident
In a family garden cross pollinating squash is interesting . Saving seeds year after year I get to grow new stains each time. Some are worth saving. Some end up in the compost. My goal is to find a disease resistant variety that tastes good. It's been hit and miss but fun just the same. I found that spraying a dilute solution of baking soda in water can mitigate powdery mildew .
I find this subject so interesting, and growing squash is just my favourite bit of gardening. They are just so fascinating. Are you going to have a bit of fun with one or two seeds from them? I did grow Delicata, but from one plant I got 3 mediocre fruits. I haven't eaten them yet though. I saw a video once, and I just can't remember where but it was about a small company that seed saves. She said she buys fishing maggots to hatch for pollination of low plants. I had problems with pollination this year especially in the tunnel, even though I had loads of attractive flowers like nasturtiums and calendula. I read that plants produce less pollen when it is very hot. It must be so frustrating for the growers that keep the same variety going just to sell the seeds, and along come seeds from less reputable growers. Something we maybe need to keep an eye on. Are you growing a lot of winter stuff?
Ive tried Delicata twice and will not again, failed both times, not sure why. Acorns are my go to, but will try crown prince next season, it looks to be a good one from your pics.
This is how I got into breeding squash lol. Discovered a pumpkin/zucchini hybrid and thought maybe I could create more.
Thanks so much Bruce! I got an interesting squash cross once where the one half (front or back) was green and the other yellow with a very clear contrast and demarcation.
I had similar issues in 2018 and 2019, also with packets of Delicata. One plant produced fruit indistinguishable from Sweet Dumpling. One plant produced hard-skinned fruit that were very dark green and much larger than Delicata and I wonder whether the pollen parent was something more of the marrow persuasion. These were not good eating.
This summer I had green onions, yellow onions and elephant garlic growing and I left the ones that bolted for the bees. They all pollinated and made seeds, and the seeds are viable. I went ahead and planted them all. Maybe I'll get something weird, maybe they'll grow true to type. I've been using the young shoots as chives and they all taste 'oniony'. The only thing that matters right now is I know for a fact they'll grow in my area with little input from me.
As much as I love the idea and the practice of seed saving, I only have so much time and attention to oversee it. I stick to easy ones: potatoes, multiplier onions, garlic, peanuts, black beans.There's a small farm just half a mile up the road, so keeping any open pollinated varieties true to form is difficult. Squash/pumpkins are one of those that I have given up on, not because of the "poison squash" fears, (I'm pretty sure the taste will be obvious is it became a problem) but because of the unpredictable and sometimes dissatisfying results, even if there is only one variety directly here in my garden. I am working on a few multiplier onion variations, though, letting them overwinter and bolt, but once I have something I'm happy with, I'll just grow those via normal clone propagation. If that works well, I may give it a shot with garlic, too. As always, thank you for sharing your careful observations, analysis, and experience with the world, Bruce!
Hey Bruce, I have access to multiple seed companies that sell these seeds. If you have trouble getting delicata or other seeds, let me know. I can send them to you (I live in the EU as well).
I’ve grown uchiki kuri for three years now but I’m saving seed for the first time to use next year. It’s the only squash I grow so hoping it’s ok. I might just use bought seed for a couple of plants as an insurance policy as I would fate to be without them.
Hi Bruce I grew Hungarian Blue and Butternut this year. I have similar climate to you, but struggle to get Butternut to ripen. The Hungarian blue germinates in low temperature which is a benefit to get large fruit. Thanks for the video 👍
I had this problem with Franchi's carrots this year. I planted several hundred square feet of beds for early market and had to compost all of them, looked even worse than the carrots you showed. I've had good luck with their other veg but will be avoiding them for carrots in the future, saving a few bucks on seeds cost me $1000 in sales. These days I only have 3-4 seed companies I buy from, not the cheapest but the quality is what matters when you consider the time and effort put into growing them, and the opportunity cost of not growing something else.
Thanks for sharing!
Maybe the seeds of the hard-skin one are edible? These seeds could be good on salads and/or bread
Hi last year I bought seeds from several sources including internet suppliers. Some of the wildflower seed I sent for though for a specific wild flower arrived as a mixed pack of about six different varieties of plants some of which I recognised and some not. These seeds came from China which I only discovered on their delivery. Needless to say I did not plant any of them. I do wonder how many people got these seeds and being unwary have planted seeds that will give us problems for years to come.
My acorn squash crossed with my pumpkin this year and I ended up with green/orange pumpkins lol. Still good tho
Very non productive summer squash season for me.
Very interesting project! I live in Florida and this summer planted two winter squash varieties, kabocha and butternut. Timing of male and female flowers was an issue in that I often did not have male flowers on the butternut vines but lots of female flowers. I also have unusual bees that take the pollen from male flowers and do not visit female flowers most likely because they have no pollen. With these two situations, I tried hand pollinating the butternut female flowers with the kabocha male flowers and it worked. The resulting fruits are green striped until mature where they turn the characteristic butternut color with faint remnants of stripes and deep orange flesh with a flavor somewhere between a kabocha and a butternut. Kabocha squash do not do as well as butternut in Florida heat so I did not get many fruits but they have an amazing flavor somewhat similar to a sweet potato.
I can't wait for the video about the squash variety test:-)
Plant geneticist here. This looks more like an F2 segregating population, or an accidental cross pollination between Delicata and a F1 hybrid variety. In a straight cross between delicata and a non hybrid variety like a zucchini or an acorn squash you should get a very uniform population, since these non-hybrid varieties should be largely homozygous. The fact that you got so much variation in 4 plants leads me to believe that at least one of the parents was a F1 variety.
I think your work is great! keep it up!
Oh goodness, I can't wait to see the results of the squash (looks like maxima?) trial. I did one this year and had some overlapping varieties.
Love Crown Price. Yet to find any comparable winter squash worth growing In uk. Never save seed as hybridisation is far too easy. True seed must always be f1 or not worth the garden space.
Sounds a bit worrying actually – there was a National Geographic article on facebook a couple of days ago saying how vegetables are losing their nutritional value – it was a locked article but I might chase it down (your carrot segment reminded me of it). Let's hope it's not sinister.. Very interesting. I was going to grow 2 varieties of pumpkins this year but will now just grow one – butternut.
thank you!
Thank you for this informative video. Very thought provoking.
Something very similar happened to me several years ago when I bought seeds of a variety called Lunga di Napoli. From the four plants I grew that year, each one produced different shape of fruits. Apart from the shape, I didn't notice any difference, they all grew the same way, produced the same and tasted the same.
Buying hybrid seeds will probably always be the safe bet as the seed growers have to manually pollinate each flower and isolate it, whereas when growing for seeds of a stable variety, I doubt the same level of isolation is done. They probably just grow the same variety in one space apart from the others, but with no guarantee a bee won't randomly fly between them.
6:25: that looks very much like a cross with the so called "yellow crookneck squash" which is one of my favourite but has nothing to do with the characteristics of delicata. Im in Co Cavan and never had success with delicata in the open ground, crown prince grows best and that yellow crookneck is also a really good one roasted and mixed with other with veg and meat.
I grew Cornell’s Delicata this season which had dark orange flesh and incredible flavour and not the washed out yellow flesh of your most likely Delicata sample. Perhaps in your context it would fare better in the poly tunnel and encouraged to climb rather than sprawl. I found the fruits to be fairly small by squash standards. Worth the premium growing space on flavour in my opinion, but looks like it might be hard to beat crown prince in your context.
Landrace! Embrace the diversity…
Thank goodness this came out today I was literally just thinking about this topic with this specific variety of squash!
Interesting episode! Hopefully you get a chance to grow some actual delicata squash next year. We grow in a similar context (PNW, Washington) to yours and they are absolutely one of our favorites.
🎃🎃🎃 very good!!!!
So the characterization of there being four species of squash that don't cross pollinate is a bit iffy. Not on the cross pollination part–that's mostly the case. But you're probably leaving out C. ficifolia, which is pretty rare, and including C. argyrosperma (syn. C. mixta, "cushaw") which is also not all that commonly grown. I have grown C. argyrosperma, but I don't know that I would suggest it for your area, as its greatest virtue seems to be resistance to the squash vine borer, comparable to butternut types (C. mochata). Given that you don't have that devastating insect, there's no reason to plant a rather bland squash with pale yellow flesh to avoid it.
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I had the same problem this year with Delecata and with Spaghetti squash. I have no idea what I ended up with, but hopefully all edible.
It's unlikely that any of the seeds you get in a packet come from the same plant or fruit. They will have processed god only knows how many at a time, before they are packaged. You also seem to have a cross with more than one type of squash.
If they two types of squash, they most likely grow three or four. Like crop rotation, you actually need a lot of space between both crops. You need another field well away from any other types of squash. They most likely tried to fit too many types for the given space between fields.
I have never seen a thick warty skin on any I grew this past two years. Mind you, they were the small Honey-boat version. So I can't speak for all the others.
Fascinating! That's not an issue I've ever had, so it's very interesting to see your results.
With regard to the original trial, I can definitely recommend delicata, which I have grown for several years. As the fruit continue to ripen (in storage mostly in my case), the characteristic green stripes will gradually turn orange. In addition to the qualities you mention, I find it a very flexible squash to grow in the garden, because the relatively small size of the fruit means it can be trellised quite imaginatively without issue. I have found "sweet dumpling" to be a variety that is quite similar. I've sourced my seeds from Kokopelli in France, if you're looking for a reliable EU producer.
Did I see some black futsus there in your variety trial montage? I tried some of them this year quite successfully but haven't eaten any of it yet, so jury's out.
its f2 tho. f1 are all the same
whether the price of chemical fertilizers in your place is also expensive….???