Open Pollinated Varieties of Squash

Heirloom Vegetables

• As the Kerr Center for Sustainable Agriculture website points out, heirloom vegetables are those non-hybrid, non-genetically engineered varieties that have been passed down as part of our agricultural or homegrown food heritage. To some people heirloom plants include only those varieties passed down as saved seed from generation to generation. Others include unusual older, though not necessarily ancient varieties developed by USDA breeding programs or land grant universities that have been grown by small farmers and market gardeners.

Benefits of Heirloom Squash

• Uniqueness is a large part of the appeal of heirloom squash. Truly “a taste of the past,” these varieties have rich flavor, unusual colors, tender textures and other valuable qualities that don’t interest big commercial growers, who value crops of uniform sizes that can be harvested mechanically. Heirloom squash often have superb flavor. Some winter squash are so sweet and fine textured that cooks prefer them to pumpkins for pumpkin pie! Growing heirloom squash is a way to save money, because you can harvest and save seed each year. More importantly, you’re saving or “banking” fairly rare genetic strains, which may be very valuable in case of future disease and pest problems with more mainstream varieties.

Summer Squash Varieties

• Black Beauty is a very prolific dark green zucchini squash, tender and flavorful. Ananashyi Zucchini is a yellow variation. There’s also Cocozelle, with light green and dark green stripes; Grey Zucchini, with light grey-green fruits; Dark Green Zucchini; a very unusual Round Zucchini. Other summer heirloom squash include various patty pan or scallop types that vaguely resemble UFOs -- Benning's Green Tint Scallop, Early White Bush Scallop and Yellow Bush Scallop – and Dwarf Crookneck and Early Prolific Straightneck.

Winter Squash Varieties

• There are dozens of high-quality winter squashes, which grow during the long spring-summer growing season then mature in late summer and autumn, like pumpkins. The Burgess Buttercup has very sweet, fine-grained flesh, and a single vine may produce 20 5-pound buttercups in a season. Waltham Butternut is one of those sweet old-time pie-making squashes, as is Long Island Cheese, named for its resemblance to a big wheel of cheddar. Sweet Meat is another cherished heirloom, along with Pink Jumbo Banana Squash. The latter can reach 75 pounds apiece, but try to harvest them at 30 pounds for best flavor and texture.

Saving Seeds

• Heirloom squash make seed saving a challenge. Because they are both wind- and insect-pollinated, various heirloom squashes cross-pollinate quite promiscuously when grown near each other – meaning any closer than half-mile away. This wild interbreeding won’t affect the crop you’re growing, because parent plants determined those characteristics. But it will affect the next generation, or the seeds of this year’s harvest. It’s impossible to know what you’ll get. So if you want to save seeds -- a prime reason to grow heirlooms -- grow only one squash variety at a time. If you really must grow more, talk friends and family members into helping you out.