How to grow pumpkins & squash
Landscape gardener Zia Mays aka Christina Erskine shares secrets from the pumpkin patch to mark her supper club with award-winning blogger Ms Marmite Lover, The Secret Garden Club
Ms Marmite Lover's recipe for Pumpkin Spice Bread
Back in the summer, the pumpkin patch was a jungle of bright green leaves, scrambling over the ground spilling over trellis. Although they only have a short season in the UK, they grow fast - seedlings planted in June are harvested in October.
How to grow pumpkins and squash...
We long ago learned that it is worth building a sturdy trellis for your pumpkins to climb up, otherwise the long stems and leaves will run all over the ground, and take over your garden. Pumpkins are voracious feeders too: they like the soil to be nutrient-rich and kept moist.
Before we plant out the little pumpkin seedlings, we dig kitchen compost into the bed, water it well and cover with black plastic. We cut holes in the plastic where we want to plant the pumpkins. It keeps the moisture in, keeps the weeds out, and keeps the soil underneath nice and warm - all things that the pumpkin plants like.
Now with the first chills of autumn, the leaves have shrivelled and died off, revealing the ripening fruits lying on the ground looking like discarded footballs.
While we grow a few big pumpkins for Hallowe'en, we don't generally plan to eat them afterwards. There are much better flavoured pumpkins out there. Our all-time favourite is an Italian variety, Berrettina Piacentina, which has greeny-grey skin, and dense, nutty bright orange flesh, with a taste somewhere between sweet potato and chestnut.
As the days shorten and the temperatures drop, the pumpkins and squash won't mature much further. Even though there are green shoots and new little fruits beginning to swell up, these won't develop much and will rot off the stem sooner rather than later.
Now is a good time to pick one's way carefully over the bed, rapping at the fruit near the stalk. Ripe pumpkins sound hollow when tapped. At any rate they should be picked, leaving as long a stalk as possible attached to the fruit, and, in the UK, taken indoors before the first frosts - frost will turn them to mush.
Eat a pumpkin straight after picking and it won't taste of much: bland and a grassy green flavour. The fruits need to be 'cured' - meaning left in a dry, warm and sunny place. Or at least a light and frost-free place - by the window in your shed or garage should be ok. Mine live on top of the kitchen cabinets, as near to the French doors as possible. This treatment toughens up the skins, which helps the pumpkins to keep for longer and also develops their rich, sweet carotene flavour. After a fortnight in the warm, the fruits can be moved somewhere cooler, but still light and airy, to store at about 12°C over the winter.
They should be ready to eat after 6-8 weeks, but those that cure well will store for months. You should be prepared to lose 2-3 fruits in storage: spots of damp or mould develop. If you catch them early, you may be able to eat the unaffected parts, but otherwise remove any rotting fruits and throw them in the compost.
Some varieties to try:
Butternut squash: bright orange flesh and a light sunshiney taste. Good for roasting.
Berrettina Piacentina: dark orange flesh, dense and noticeably drier than a butternut. The green-skinned fruits can be anywhere from bowling-ball sized upwards. Crown Prince and Queensland Blue are similar.
Marina di Chioggia: similar to Berrettina Piacentina, but with distinctively knobbly skin.
Futsu: a small variety with nutty-flavoured flesh.
Spaghetti squash: at the other end of the taste spectrum, this is a great way to get your courgetti pasta without the need for a spiralizer, looking exactly how it says in the name.
Pumpkin Spice Bread Recipe
Here at the Secret Garden Club, we have loved using our home grown squash to make delicious autumnal recipes. British shops are starting to stock a wider variety of pumpkins and squash, something more interesting than the rather watery and stringy Jack O'Lantern. I've seen mini munchkin pumpkins, acorn squash, and of course the perennial stalwart butternut squash. These are having a dense, nutty, sweet flesh. But do try this seasonal Halloween recipe. I served it sliced and grilled, topped with melted cheese and a smattering of green chilli sauce. Everybody loved it!
Click here for the full recipe
Kerstin Rodgers aka MsMarmitelover is the pioneer of the supper club movement in the UK. She has written four books: Supper Club: Recipes and Notes from the Underground Restaurant, MsMarmitelover's Secret Tea Party, V is for Vegan and Get Started in Food Writing. Her award-winning site is msmarmitelover.com.
Christina Erskine is a garden designer based in north London. She also grows her own fruit, vegetables and edible flowers in a tiny back garden and on two allotments. Find her at urbanhedgerow.co.uk and on Facebook atfacebook.com/urbanhedgerow.
Secret Garden Club tickets £40 BYO. Book here: edibleexperiences.com
msmarmitelover.com | Read the Secret Garden Club blog here.
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