I planted two kinds of squash this year, spaghetti and patty pan. The plants grew most excellently and in the case of the spaghetti squash, I got for small squash that fit in the palm of my hand. In the case of the patty pans, I got nearly didley freakin' squat. I did get lots of flowers, though, which was a nice consolation for an otherwise pathetic patty pan crop.I don't know exactly what went wrong, but as I was reading a section in Earth to Table, I wondered if it was the plant: I seemed to have more male flowers than female flowers. A lot of flowers just dried up and died; very few of them produced any squash at all.
I have no idea why this was or what I can do to remedy it, and I had to wonder at nature: surely these plants would have figured it out!Anyway, I think I got about 5 patty pan squash out of a huge pile of plants. These plants took up a lot of room in my small plot, and I felt annoyed that I got so little product from them.
Though the flowers bloomed early, it was a while before any sign of squash showed up, and as we had a series of early frosts I had to harvest the little guys earlier than I wanted to. In the end, this is what I got:
Yeah, these are SMALL, man! The smallest is less than 1cm in diameter. I was not impressed. I even had a recipe from Canadian Living for patty pan squash skewers that I wanted to make, but it wasn't going to happen. In the end, I tossed these with a bit of oil, salt & pepper, and roasted them off with the potatoes I cooked for my spatchcocked chicken meal. This is a very close up view of this "side dish:"
Grrrrrr! I will not be growing these again next year. The spaghetti squash, on the other hand, is another story.
13 comments:
I've never heard of a patty pan squash!!
This is new to me! Too bad they didn't grow very well, but being that small makes them awfully cute.
Ah that sucks they didn't grow well. I got 2 edible tomatoes off of my plant...that was it :(
Thanks for the stories. I will be adding gardening to my new skill sets next season. I am collecting stories to decide what to do. Probably going to start small with a fresh herb garden, but that's what I said about blogging (starting small)
Patty pan squashes look so cute! Lucky you
Cheers,
Rosa
This happened with my eggplants - they are the size of a small tomato. Bummer.
I've never heard of patty pan squash myself. My parents used to grow squash and they would pinch off 3/4 of the flowers. They said that it made the plants focus more on growing a few squash so they grew bigger. I'm not sure if it has any science behind it, but they would always get big ones.
Dang, sucks they didn't grow well for your! They taste great. I'd have eaten the ones you made!
They are so small. Never heard of them.
Patty Pan, wasn't she the red headed, freckled chick from Charlie Brown? ;)
Fall squashes are something I have absolutely NO experience with, other than selling them when I worked in the produce department at a grocery store when I was 18. The one thing I remember about these is that they are "almost" aerodynamic if you toss them like a frisbee!
Those are tiny squash....the flowers are pretty.
I bought some patty pan and didn't know what to do with them. I wish I had more room for a garden
I bought some patty pan and didn't know what to do with them. I wish I had more room for a garden
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