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Produce => Edible Plants => Topic started by: Digeroo on November 26, 2017, 06:44:33
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Tromba d'Albenga
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My big problem is storage. Those in the kitchen are beginning to rot.
Most are outside in the porch covered in bubble wrap, a blank and a coat with bottles of water on top. They are so far looking good but if the temperature drops too much they will get frosted and then rot. Not enough room in the fridge. Though I have a couple that got damaged in their.
Suggestions please.
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My big problem is storage. Those in the kitchen are beginning to rot.
Most are outside in the porch covered in bubble wrap, a blank and a coat with bottles of water on top. They are so far looking good but if the temperature drops too much they will get frosted and then rot. Not enough room in the fridge. Though I have a couple that got damaged in their.
Suggestions please.
Store dry, frostfree and not touching, which is easier said than done with curly trombos. Cool preferably but not necessary, but clearly not right against a radiator etc. Maybe under the bed on a piece of wood, tarp or large trays? In a guest bedroom? On top of a wardrobe? Wouldn't it be lovely to have a cellar :BangHead:
However, they also freeze well. Cut up into slices or chunks, whichever way you use them in the kitchen, and freeze. Or make a large batch of butternut squash soup with all the suspect ones and freeze that in portions. It would be a crying shame to lose them. :wave:
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I store my squash in the eves. It is unheated but wont ever freeze, there is a nice bit of air circulation and it is dry.
I also find that giving the squash a wash before storing them with a mild bleach solution also helps.
I still have a couple from last year - they are a bit dried out but are still edible.
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I like the thought of the roof but getting them up there will be a bit of a haul. We have a piece over the garage with the children used as a tree house when they were young. Not easy to check on them regularly. The main roof has fibre glass insulation so not keen on that. The problem is if they go mouldy clearing up.
Not touching? Oh dear they are in a large pile at the moment.
Yes cellar would be great. I left squash in garage one year and lost the lot. But it was the year it got down to -16C.
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Mine, at the moment decorating the hearth, harvest festival style:D end up in the barely heated spare bedroom, on trays, and usually last for months there.
I do check them often though, as sometimes a few start to get 'spotty' and then need eating up quickly.
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I tried to find a photo from Grannieannie of her cellar or basement with all the butternuts hanging from the rafters.
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I hang my squashes in string bags from beams at the back of the garage. They keep really well. Most importantly this position is completely dry. Also, purely by happenchance, a nearby large chest freezer produces just enough external heat to ensure frost free.
But I grow crown prince and other conventional shapes. Your big problem is that yours are curly trombo types. Do they really taste so good that could not switch to a shape that was more convenient to store but tasted just as good. Now that doesn't solve your immediate problem but there is always next season!!
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Some just store better than others. I store mine in a garage and a brick shed and they usually last well past March/April if needed. Trick is to get good storing varieties Warringah Crown, Crown prince etc and dry them off, say in a greenhouse, to harden the skin properly before storage. Also find that medium/large sized ones store much better than smaller ones.
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I've never grown tromboncini but I get the impression they just don't store as well as some of the more conventional winter squash varieties. For storage I wash them first in warm water, dry carefully and then store in a cool part of the house. Mainly Uchiki Kuri this year plus a few Crown Prince and Turks Turban. Not sure how the latter will be for eating - will try them in soup if nothing else.
Haven't grown Crown Prince before either but are meant to be very good for both keeping and eating; haven't tried one yet (just been eating the UK) but the fruits look great. CP fruits are noticeably dense as well, much heavier than similarly sized UK.
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The advantage for me is that Tromba grow well. As you can see lots of them!! They grow like a weed. And keep the weeds at bay. I have had them right up into May. So until the courgettes kick in. They grow particularly well and straight over dalek type compost bins.
They are much easier to cut and slice, and yet good flavour. And very little seed. I slice them and the end seals over so very easy to use over a couple of weeks. And the seeds are cheap.
Have grown Turks Turban in the past but was not impressed by the taste, but you can sort that out in soup.
Just started a Barbara which I had missed and has been knibbled, I thought it was an oversized courgette until I trod on it. The flesh is very solid. I have five more in perfect condition. Very small seed compartment. Does not seem to produce viable seed, seeds are tiny and not fully formed. I once grew butternuts from a saved supermarket fruit and got no seed at all just pure flesh.
This is my first year with Crown Prince, I have three, one small one has rotted off. Did not notice so did not catch it in time. Seeds are expensive.
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I'll have to try Tromba then... you give it such a good write up on storage. I've not had any Crown Prince rotting before March.. but as you said the seeds can be expensive. Most of my squash spend most f the Winter in a Wilcos plastic greenhouse (open front so it doesn't get damp) inside a large cold greenhouse... I haven't shed space for them all, but will throw fleece and bubble wrap over them for a day or two if it gets really cold. Shark's Fin are my most tender so at that point they come into the spare bedroom.
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Trombo also tend to go from one end, so you can catch them cut off the rotten bit and eat the rest.
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Turks Turban have a good texture and work well shredded raw in coleslaw.
I'd also say the taste I get is good, but I bought my last seed decades ago so can't be sure what the packet version tastes like now.
I haven't cooked any pumpkin or squash since the late-70s - it only took a few mouthfuls of orange mush to send me back to carrots.
In fact until late '90s I gave them away in return for the seeds, so TT was the smallest-seeded one I bothered with - I'm still missing Cerrano Blue and its delicious 3cm seeds - much less work per mouthful. I asked a friend of mine why she bothered eating the shelled seeds in the shops that are barely 1cm and she said "it's just to keep my hands busy while watching TV"!
Cheers.
PS. I did try Lady Godiva, Triple Treat and Kakai - but the flavour of the seeds was mediocre at best and the flesh was worse (I never tried it cooked, but I doubt it improves).
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I give the seed to the birds usually or the compost heap. Love pumpkin flesh roasted and then souped or else in vegetarian curries. It will mush if overcooked but that's down to the cook isn't it.
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Has anyone tried pumpkin seed milk, you put them in a liquidiser hull and all and whizz it up. Then put through a sieve and then through a fine sieve and pumpkin
I'm still missing Cerrano Blue and its delicious 3cm seeds
Could you go back to some from previous years, they last about 6 plus years.
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Could you go back to some from previous years, they last about 6 plus years.
I kept the seed-line going fine for about 5 or 6 years, but sadly the % germination suddenly started to go down so fast that the 5 seedlings I needed meant sowing all the seeds I had, including the older ones. A year or two later I got zero germination from all the seed I had, and Chiltern had stopped selling it well before that.
I'm assuming it was either unstable or encountered a natural version of the "terminator" gene.
b-and-t-world-seeds.com says "Sorry, seeds of Cucurbita pepo Cerrano (prov. Ecuador) are not currently available (Fruit: large, light BLUE)"
None of the google images match - it had few if any ridges and was only slightly egg/prolate shaped 60-80cm long - I had several big ones nicked over the years - so I may have won some shows without actually being there.
If there was a class for big cucurbit seeds (unlikely) it would have won easily; it could have won "best tasting seed" too, but that class really doesn't exist, and never will exist in this world - so obsessed with style over substance.
Cheers.
PS. If you're making any kind of nut milk (including tigernut/chufas - which are actually tubers) then it's worth using the residue to improve bread recipes, so it's also worth getting rid of the hulls/shells first. There's a lot of flavour still in there when using domestic blenders (industrial extraction leaves nothing - so it just goes to fertiliser or animal feed).
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It is quite interesting but if you look up pictures of Equadorean pumpkins they are not blue.
What about this one
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HUIsn5nMRA0
Have you tried Cucurbita pepo Citrouille de Touraine is it supposed to have delicious huge seeds. Available on ebay.
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https://www.rareseeds.com/the-fascinating-citrouille-de-touraine/
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They do look huge seeds. Presumably easier to remove the husk?
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Possibly not. They look quite solid.
On the subject of Tromba, my husband does not like them, he will eat the small butternut But I only managed to grow four. I prefer the taste of the Tromba though some are more fibrous than others. I will be interested in the dark skinned ones. But at the moment they look as if they might last well.
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IIRC large Blue Hubbard has lovely big seeds :)
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It is quite interesting but if you look up pictures of Equadorean pumpkins they are not blue.
What about this one
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HUIsn5nMRA0
Have you tried Cucurbita pepo Citrouille de Touraine is it supposed to have delicious huge seeds. Available on ebay.
The blue one in the video is pretty close, but you imply it isn't from Ecuador (though obviously Spanish-speaking countries have better chances of seed-swaps than we do).
The Citrouille de Touraine seeds look almost flat except at the edges - making it very difficult to estimate the size of the kernel. The best Cerrano kernels were about 25 x 15 x 4mm thick.
That's a lot of meat for less work - large seeds are actually easier and quicker to shell, easier to use scissors on the problem ones, and easier to grab the kernel with fat fingers like mine.
And in my opinion shelled seeds taste better than the naked ones in the shops (home grown naked ones aren't that much better). I suspect flavour was the first thing lost when the naked types were bred - though they are much improved by careful roasting and the oil is absolutely delicious - especially on tuna-rice salad.
Unfortunately toasted pumpkin seed oil was lost from supermarket shelves in the last recession and has never made it back - not even to Waitrose - it's crazy - the flavour is unique and well worth the £16 per litre at the time, whereas you can pay quadruple that for fancy olive oil that just tastes like olive oil - it's never more than 5% better than good (standard) Cretan Extra Virgin (£25 for 5L), and often worse.
Cheers.
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I once bought some fantastic pumpkin seeds from a carpark in Turkey. All sorts of things were laid out on mats to dry. Such as apple slices for tea etc, So I was persuaded to buy some. Everything was very cheap and I give the guy enough for the tea seemed I was expected to haggle and since I did not he threw in the roasted pumpkin seeds, and The apple tea was amazing and the pumpkins delicious. By the time I found out how lovely there were I was too far away to get some seeds to grow. It was sold roasted you ate the hulls as well.
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The seeds of Citrouille de Touraine have arrived. They are huge. A good 2.5 cm. Really odd shape with a curled rim. Not sure the actual kernel is much bigger than a normal one.
Anyway it will be a bit of fun.
I am hoping to get some Gete Okosomin Squash. My daughter is due to go to USA in January. So hoping she can bring them back.
I shall have to perfect hand pollination,