You Will Know EVERYTHING About Squash After This

in today's episode we're going to give you guys a comprehensive Shopping Guide to everything you need to know about squash understanding the differences between varieties and really breaking down some of the most popular questions you guys ask let's go so when it comes to squash you have two main classifications of squash you have summer squash and winter squash now the difference between the two is that they are both yes they are both cucur pepo which is confusing but the big difference is the skin when it comes to summer squash summer squash have a thin skin that is usually fairly edible when it comes to Winter squash the winter squash hardens becomes very thick and often times is UNP palatable or can even be very bitter and so it's used more as a storage squash hence winter squash grow it during the main season it gets hard once it cures you can store it for 3 to four months or even more indoors that's the main main difference between the two but now I know you're probably asking this what's the big difference then between summer squash and zucchini and winter squash and pumpkin so first let's talk about summerr squash zucchini is actually a type of summer squash most people don't know this they actually classify it totally differently and they say well I don't like summer squash but I do like zucchini well if you like zucchini you do like summer squash that's because there's actually four different types of summer squash including one being zucchini so when it comes to the foring varieties of summer squash you have the most popular being your zucchini now your zucchinis are a slender straight summer squash the skin is very smooth and often times they grow in a bush-like pattern now the bushes can sometimes get 3 to four feet long and that's if a longer growing season allows them to grow you know for a longer period of time they're naturally going to get bigger but they don't Vine like a winter squash will so they smooth skinned very slender squash and they are typically seen as like this Italian striped zucchini or a cazelle you have a gray zucchini which is like an Egyptian style zucchini and then you also have here like this Italian style of Bianca D trusty zucchini they're all zucchinis it's just a subtype of summer squash then you have your crook necks now your crook necks are typically seen as more of a bent neck and that's hence the name crook neck now you can have something like an early prolific straight neck which is a crook neck that's kind of been straightened out over time it's still a crook neck variety and then you have a crook neck like this yellow crook neck squash those are two really common types of crook neck summer squash next you've got your scalloped squash or your Patty pan squash these are really common because of their scalloped that's where they get their name edges those little bumps that are that are around the perimeter of the squash are known as scallops and they can be seen in this green scalloped bending squash or this yellow scalloped squash or even a white scallop squash there's many different varieties of scallop squashes but it's again just a type of summer squash and last but not least you have your round squash that can be seen like in the case of this round eight ball squash here or in the case of this yellow lemon squash many different variations of round squashes but again the idea is that they are just just round in shape they're all going to be formed on a bush style squash the bush may get a foot tall may get 3 to 4 feet tall but again that's mostly dependent on the growing season the skin in all of them is edible and is very soft and if you try to save these throughout winter they'll turn into a rotten mess so that is what differentiates summer squash from Winter squash now things get really interesting with winter squash now much like zucchini and summer squash we're to pumpkins fall in if someone says I like eating winter squash but I wouldn't eat pumpkin well if you eat pumpkin you're also eating a winter squash pumpkin is just a subtype of winter squash what differentiates a pumpkin from some of these other options is that typically the skin is going to be slightly thinner and the flesh is going to be slightly less sweet but it is still a storage squash and so you have many different options there are nine different types of winter squash that make up the winter squash category you have one of them being pumpkins some of the more popular pumpkins are like this Long Island cheese pumpkin you have here this big Max pumpkin this one gets like 60 to 70 lbs incredible then you have here this rou Rouge Viv damps this is a French style pumpkin also known as Cinderella easier to say that than the original name but that is a really flat pumpkin and then you have here something like this winter luxury pumpkin which has actually got a webbing over it almost like a cantaloupe it's so beautiful really incredible and then last but not least is your Long Island cheese pumpkin and this is one of my favorites this actually has a fairly sweet flesh almost like a winter squash like you'd probably expect from like a Butternut or a uh or like a um delicada you can get into those kind of sweeter squashes but this is a really sweet pumpkin as well so that's a pumpkin now the next category is one that you're probably more familiar with now one you're most probably familiar with is the butternut squash this is actually a style of winter squash butternut squash can be seen by their two lobed kind of peanut shaped squash now these are a Vine and one thing you'll probably see very commonly with your winter squash versus your summer squash is Summer squash are grown on a very short Stumpy Vine versus your winter squash typically really Vine now that's not always the case you can find Bush winter squash and Vining winter squash we have a couple we'll get into but like this walam butternut squash here is a Butternut style and it will grow very very long the vine will now you can get into a Butternut style also known as butter Bush and that's still a Butternut style squash but it's a bush variety of Butternut next style squash is your kaboa style squash now squash have been sprad for centuries throughout the world and you'll find that there are squash that are more uh more commonly found in Asian cultures more commonly found in like French cultures Spanish cultures even like European cultures have their own kind of certain squashes that they kind of call to be theirs and so with this caboa style squash this is more of an Asian or Japanese style squash still a winter squash but what you'll find differentiates these from say like a pumpkin or an acor squash is the size you see these this is a Burgess Buttercup and this is a true caboa squash they're both cabocha style but you'll find that the squash is going to be a little bit larger than an acorn a little bit smaller than say like a hubard or some of your other varieties of squash but the flush is very sweet and the skin is really really thick on these also the skin is typically going to be green in color in most of your caboa style squashes now we're getting a little bit weird and this is known as a banana style squash one of the most popular types of banana squash is going to be the north Georgia candy rooster this is by far the most popular and one that you're going to come across if you ever look at winter squash this is popular for the simple sake that it is a high yielding really large squash these will get 2 to 3 feet long and they are really beautiful they're super rich in their flavor as well so that high sugar content and they last a long time they'll last 3 to 5 months in winter storage no problem at all acorn squash you're probably asking yourself when I was going to get to this category but acorn squash can be found pretty easily by its Acorn shaped squash now you'll see something like this sweet dumpling that's an acorn squash then you have a table King Bush Acorn and then you also have this gild gills golden peppen squash there's a lot of different varieties of acorn squash but what you'll find is that acorn squash gets into that kind of bush or Vining category a lot of winter squash are Vining by nature but this is where you start to get into some options where if you don't have a lot of space you can find a winter squash that has long storage very sweet flavor but can maybe grow on a bush prime example is this right here this table King Bush Acorn only gets about 3 to 4 feet long the the fruit that it puts out is very similar to like a summer squash or like a kind like Patty pan style squash but it doesn't get very large and it's a winter squash um same thing to to with like this dumpling the sweet dumpling squash here you're going to be on a vine but the fruits are fairly small and it stays somewhat compact versus the gills golden Pippen it's going to vine out like 10 15 20 feet from the base of the plant so some options there but that is another variety of the nine different winter squash that are available next is a German type of squash and this is known as a hubard squash like I said there's some squash that are more commonly found in Asia some are more found in you know Spain others are found in Europe and the Hub is that kind of European style squash now these squash are they look very similar to a caboa squash only they usually have kind of a a pulled up kind of a teardrop point to them like a water droplet and it's a really cool very very cool but you have here like a golden hubard as well as a blue hubard and they're going to be fairly large they're going to be much larger in size than a caboa style squash they're going to be any anywhere from about 15 to 20 lb they can be smaller but generally 15 20 lb is what you're going to average out and so in the pictures they don't seem all that large but hubard squash they're a real nice size next is the delicata style delicata style can be seen from its elongated shape but it's really uniform some have ribs some do not but also they're usually very very sweet with a pretty thick skin this delicata squat here can also be found there's another variety called sweet meat those are delicata style and they grow on a vine they're a winter squash and again it's just one other kind of subgroup of winter squash now the thing about delicata that's pretty interesting is the fact that the the meat to skin ratio is really high so if you're looking for like a high yielding squash you're not going to have a lot of waste which is what people really like to use these for typically you're going to slice them in half you're going to hollow out the cavity and you're going going to roast them and that makes it wonderful for a whole roasted squash option cuz some of your other winter squashes have a pretty thick skin like I said but these because they have a really hard yet thin skin allows them to be preserved indoors for 3 to 4 hours next winter squash variety we're getting on a plane we're flying to Mexico for the cusha squash now the cusha squash is a Mexican or just a South American style squash it is also a winter squash so it has a thick skin but you'll find that this green striped Cushaw squash will get anywhere between 20 to 30 lbs it's a good siiz squash really long life expect or shelf life I should say um once you bring it indoors but also it's again a Vining squash now the cool thing about this cusha squash is it actually was bred with some of your more European style squashes and so over time you've kind of had a blending or a melding where your cusha squashes are typically green or blue in color but there are many different squashes that actually over time have kind of fused together and you have some Asian squash combined with a cusha squash and that's actually where you start to get the butternut squash strain of winter squash and last but not least you have your kind of what I would consider to be your pumpkin squashes now there are a lot of different pumpkin squashes out there some are called squash some are called pumpkin and that's because the batan IAL world doesn't quite know how to classify these they have usually a fairly sweet flesh but a fairly thick skin and so it kind of has both aspects of squash and pumpkin to them usually they're also fairly deeply ribbed like a pumpkin would be and so you have like this jedel pumpkin very cool super unique blue super deeply ribbed long shelf life pumpkin but also a squash and so it's technically called a pumpkin but it has more characteristics of a squash than a pumpkin does same thing here with this black futu squash this by all accounts you look at this and say that's a pumpkin if you saw it in a pumpkin field it would look like a pumpkin but it's a squash why well it's just because of the way they named it don't let that get you hung up because there are a lot of different squash pumpkins that might look like one or look like another but at the end of the day like I said pumpkin is just a subgroup of winter squash it's still used for storage it's still used for for cooking it's still edible but it may not have as much sugar content but wait I got one more thing to talk about here and that's the difference between gourds and squash a lot of people get this confused and think that they are the same they are technically the same but they're also technically not and I'll explain now when it comes to gourds they are still a cucur a pppo which causes some confusion because they're all in the cucar beita pppo classification now certain varieties of gourds you'll find can be edible like in the case of the Turk turban you can eat it but it's not recommended and the reason why is because of the flavor the thickness of the skin or the size of the fruits you'll find that often times gourds are going to be very very thick super hard to actually cut into once you do you'll find the seed cavity is really large in proportion to the amount of meat so harvesting from it becomes really not worth your time but then finally you'll find the flavor themselves is really unpalatable many times gourds are called gourds because over time as they've been tasted they're usually really bitter and in some cases are so bitter they can cause nausea and upset stomach so that is why when you see gourds typically they have another purpose usually it's ornamental or in the case of like a loofah gourd it's dried and the inside uh membrane of the gourd can actually be used to create a sponge which can be used in like your shower so there it's still a purpose but it's not an edible purpose I hope this really helped and I really hope that this broke down some of that information and I really hope also that you guys found uh found this to be fun informative and you know enlightening in some way I know there's a lot of different options and ultimately what this comes down to is are you looking for certain flavor certain growth characteristics maybe certain Origins if you're looking for you know growing uh like ethnically accurate uh examples for what you're trying to cook in your house um you might want to go with a certain type of squash but they're all going to be great I'd recommend trying them all there's a lot to learn about squash winter squash summer squash gourds giant pumpkins and the like so hope you guys enjoyed as always this is Luke from the Mig Gardner Channel reminding you to grow bigger check out Mig gardner.com if you're looking at getting some seeds we got you covered we'll catch you all on the next episode see you bye

Channel: MIgardener

Views: 18,164

Keywords: vegetable gardening, organic gardening, garden, gardening, growing food, vegetables, vegetable garden, tomatoes, how to grow, simple, sustainable, urban gardening, raised bed, permaculture

Id: 4Do0h7dNyvU

Length: 15min 56sec (956 seconds)

Published: Fri Feb 23 2024