Weeding the Web

Plant Review: Honey Boat Squash

If you've ever fancied growing a giant pumpkin, Thompson and Morgan not only provide seed taken from last year's record-breaking winner of the Great Pumpkin Commonwealth's annual event, but this year have set the date to sow for you: 12th April.

Paul Hansord, T&M’s Commercial Director, who likes growing pumpkins himself apparently, revealed:  

We get so many enquiries at the giant pumpkin weigh-in and around Halloween, when people are seeing pumpkins in the shops, asking how to grow them at home, we’ve decided to set April 12^th as National Pumpkin Sowing Day 2017.

If people can buy their seeds and get ready to sow them on this date, we’ll support them with growing tips and hope that someone out there might grow a pumpkin to rival last year’s winner.

Honey Boat Squash from Dobies, part of the Rob Smith Heritage Collection. One quirk is that the stripes disappear as the stored squash ages, so you always know which to eat first.

Personally, I've never felt the urge to grow ultra big (or even big, come to that). Too much feeding, watering, nipping off flowers. So I was more than happy to receive some plug plants of Honey Boat, one of Rob Smith's Heritage Collection from Dobies, last year - part of a surprise package from them.

Honey Boat promises a size just right for two - with super sweet, with firm, deep orange flesh - and productivity better than a butternut. There was only one problem - pumpkins and squashes don't like me. With the ardour of a teenager who can't read the rebuff from that good-looking boy down the road, I keep trying, but almost without fail I get a plethora of male flowers, followed by a few sulky females which show promise and then drop off, only for the plant to realise - rather too late to grow anything larger than a grapefruit - that perhaps it ought to answer Nature's call to reproduce.

My Honey Boat squash actually came up with loads of female flowers, but nearly all of them dropped off. When I gave a rundown of my experience with the Red and Yellow Currant Tomato plants from Dobies, I was despairing of seeing any squash at all. But - hurrah! - this was too pessimistic. Full harvest from one plant (the other never came to much - my fault, as previously reported)  = two delightful little squash.

Please note that 'little'. The description that comes with Honey Boat is that each squash will feed two. Mine each offered something rather skimpy for one. However, they did taste lovely. They had sweet, dense flesh - just what you hope for. They have large seed cavities, which mean they'd be good stuffers, but I just cut them in half and roasted them with olive oil and garlic. Very popular at the Sunday lunch table, they were, even if there wasn't a huge amount to go round.

Honey Boat Squash, ready to roast

I grew the squash in a large planter, up a fence-wire support. This means you can see what's going on more easily, dead leaves are easier to pick off, and slugs and snails are less of a threat. Possibly it results in a smaller harvest but, given my track record, this for me is pretty much as good as it gets, so I'd say not.  Feeding-wise, I'd added Thompson and Morgan's Incredicrop granules. Dobies' website recommends a mostly manure-filled hole around two feet square and 18-24 inches deep, so I really should think of extra feeding next time.

Despite last year's harvest, I liked the result so much that I've saved the seeds. You see, as far as squashes go, they just can't give me the brush-off.  If you've got any tips on getting squash off to an eager start, do share them below!

Red Currant, Yellow Currant - heritage tomatoes from Dobies

Back in March I received a surprise package. Dobies sent samples from their new heritage vegetable range, selected by last year's winner of The Great Allotment Challenge, Rob Smith. My bounty included three plants each of Tomato Red Currant and Tomato Yellow Currant, and two Honey Boat squash plants.

Tomato Red Currant from Rob Smith's heritage veg selection from Dobie's

To be honest, I could do with more of this sort of thing. Not that creating a lush plantation on an underspecified windowsill doesn't try the patience of family members when it comes to drawing the curtains. (And lush it was; they took off from the moment I potted them on and I potted on again before daring to put them into their final positions outside.) But it was great to have tomato plants so early as I rarely bother to sow tomatoes until April and certainly not squash, for the very reason that I don't have a greenhouse.

Hence, for me, I am now well ahead of my usual game. This, in a year when I heard the Gardeners' Question Time panel bemoaning the weather and the fact that they hadn't yet harvested tomatoes.

Hah! I preened. I've gathered at least a hundred.

Sounds good, huh? But did you note the name? Red/Yellow Currant. Somehow, I just thought these would be a whimsically named cherry. I was wrong. The names are trade-description accurate, as proven by the redcurrant which kindly agreed to model.

A redcurrant and a Red Currant. Quite a few of the tomatoes are smaller than this one.

There's actually quite a lot to be said for them. Picking is a bit of fiddle, as their size makes them easy to drop and the languishing foliage means that 1) they don't necessarily fall through to the soil and 2) they're hard to find again. Soup, sauce and stuffing are obviously out, but I'm finding it rather seductive to just toss a handful onto a salad without cutting and deseeding. Ditto risottos.

Taste-wise they're lovely warm from the vine, with a good zing to balance the sweetness, their size providing a pop of flavour on the tongue. Out of the fridge? Still zingy, not quite so flavoursome, but that's tomatoes in general.

I seem to be growing from one extreme to the other. Last year was an experiment with Gigantomo, and generally they were more useful. It's a question of balance. Six plants of the two Currants means that I don't have room for many other varieties. One plant wouldn't be enough, I reckon, if you wanted a good showing in salad on a regular basis. But if you have room for two or three, depending on your desire to consume, that would probably be enough to justify them as a tasty, no-preparation addition to your harvest.

Tomato Yellow Currant, available from Dobie's

The Currants are new and exclusive to Dobie's but, given the laissez-faire approach to naming veg varieties, I wouldn't be surprised if the red one were an extremely close relative of Victoriana's Sweet Pea Currant tomato. Their website gives a description which pretty much hits the spot.

We cannot pretend that this is a tidy variety to grow; you are best to just contain the growth within a circle of strings rather than try to formally train and thin.

There was certainly something about my plants which stopped me from growing as a cordon. I just let them get on with it. Branches tend to be long and it's most definitely a sprawler. However, Victoriana does add that, if you do grow as a cordon, you'll have tomatoes more the size of a cherry variety, which might appeal more to some.

Meanwhile Rob Smith, who has, he says, a passion for heritage veg with their overtones of childhood tastes and helping at his grandfather's allotment, has chosen some other tempting varieties for his range from Dobie's.

Honey Boat Squash

I fear I won't be discovering the joys of Honey Boat, though. One plant has romped away with plenty of female flowers but the other (entirely my own fault) is stunted through neglect and only just beginning to flower. On the plant that's thriving, the fruits are withering away. I'll try hand pollination to see if that helps, and perhaps I might get some sort of harvest by the end of the year, but I'm kicking myself for not doing this sooner. as I was really looking forward to trying a squash that promises to be "easier to grow, and sweeter than a butternut squash." Rob adds:

It’s more productive too... The fruits are super sweet with firm, deep orange flesh, the ideal size to serve 2 people. It’s also got its own built-in best before date, as the green stripes will disappear as the squash ages, so you’ll always know which to eat first.

Well, I can certainly confirm there are loads of fruit (all shrivelling). Actually, to add insult to injury, I won't be getting any other squash either. The Turks Turban I bought in to make up for my inadequacies was razed to soil level by voracious molluscs.

Moral: never forget to replace night-time protection, even once.

Ah, well, there's always next year...

 

Halloween pumpkins don't come any bigger than this

Bigger is better. Well, it is if you're Stuart Paton who won the top prize of £1000 at the RHS's London Harvest Festival Show, which took place this month.

The giant cucurbit weighed 327kg (721.4lb). Now, Stuart is no stranger to squashy success and I can only think his competitors' hearts sink when they realise they're up against him. Last year, he and his twin, Ian, grew a monster and explained that the secret was in feeding the pumpkin a good, balanced diet. He must be right; when the lists were available on the website of The European Giant Vegetable Growers' their name featured heavily in the annual lists of heaviest pumpkins (all 1100lb+), a class that they won in 2010 and 2008.

If you feel yours have proved rather puny, then their Pumpkin Growing Instructions and, at Gardeners Net, Top Ten Secrets for Growing Record-Breaking Giant Pumpkins will give you a head start. Mycorrhizae might prove helpful too.  You have a way to go, though to break the new world record of 2009lbs, achieved by Ron Wallace in Rhode Island.

For those who want to give their pumpkin an extra spurt, without all that extra work, (or cheat, as the rest of us might say) here's an aged tip from The Garden Magazine, 1918, found on the delightful Earthly Pursuits website.

Secure some pieces of round lamp wick. Holes are made in the stalk of the fruit and, into these, one end of the wick is inserted. The other end of the wick rests in a jar of water which is kept well supplied.

This, it says, will ensure that pumpkins grow at twice their normal rate. Or will it risk injury to the vine and offer an entry point for plant diseases, as Pumpkin Nook says of the alternative option of feeding them milk.

It's a method used, I discover from the Milk Fed Pumpkin blog, in Laura Ingalls Wilder's book Farmer Boy, by Almanzo (yes, her future husband). The blog describes a modern-day attempt at the same feat. Sadly, until its early demise, their non-milk fed pumpkin did the best. So perhaps it doesn't work.

But you really want it to, don't you?

If by any chance you've succeeded with pumping up a pumpkin, then do let us know. In the meantime, don't assume yours won't take on a growth spurt (as happened to the person who's pumpkin is pictured above) and here are a few ideas for Halloween, gruesome and cute.

 

 

Preserving Your Pumpkin (and making cheesecake)

Just thought I’d slip in a quick one about Halloween as so many of you will be choosing your pumpkin and lovingly carving a masterpiece into it this week. You can make your carved pumpkin last longer by following the instructions at Pumpkin Patches and More. You’ll need bleach and Vaseline. 

And, instead of making the ubiquitous pumpkin soup with the innards, how about trying this recipe for Pumpkin Cheesecake?

For anyone confused by the use of American cups in the recipe, 1 cup = approx 8 fluid ounces, which = 125mL (for more measurement conversions, don't forget OnlineConversion. If you try the recipe, let us know how it turns out.

 

Cinderella - coaching a star at Halloween

One of the most popular pages on Weeding the Web at the moment is Cinderella’s Pumpkin Coach. I doubt it if it’s all down to the Bishops' Conference's call to shun the excesses of Halloween, but a glance at America makes me wonder if the desire for sweeter things hasn’t to do with people, there and in this country, tiring of the ghoulish emphasis of 31st October.

Nothing seems to represent Halloween better than the pumpkin and personally I enjoy carving a gap-toothed grimace into something that will otherwise just go for soup. But websites offer all sorts of unexpected, non-harrowing alternatives.

Extreme Pumpkins : pumpkin carving at its goriest

I've mentioned Tom Nardone before, in Halloween Parties, but if you’re bored with the usual pumpkin designs, or looking for something “extreme” to do with your Atlantic Giant, then his website has very arresting designs.

Personally, I’m happy with a gap-toothed frown (on the pumpkin, silly), but these, frankly, stomach-churning designs will certainly appeal to small boys.

Tom provides 48 downloadable pumpkin patterns, including Gunshot to the Head, Drowning Pumpkin (nastier than it sounds) and his renowned Puking Pumpkin (pictured). Included are instructions on quick carving (power tools involved), and pumpkin preservation.

Tom has also had two books published: Extreme Pumpkins and Extreme Pumpkins II. You can find them at Amazon.

Cinderella’s pumpkin coach: Halloween without the horror

Returning to the theme of Halloween, for those of you with a glut of pumpkins who would like to carve a cucurbit but who don’t go for ghoulish, or have religious objections to Halloween, this Cinderella Coach project is cute.

It’s American, but any item unobtainable here is easily substituted. Send us a pic if you make one.

NB The page is no longer available on the BHG website

Halloween Party Ideas - what to do with all those pumpkins

If you’re planning a Halloween party just now, then Extreme Halloween will certainly give you ideas for decorations and food, not to mention what to do with the pumpkin glut from the garden.

A Halloween party in Britain usually means making toffee and bobbing for apples but this book, by Tom Nardone, is hard-core American Halloweening.

From suggestions for the barbecue (Roasted Human Being, anyone?) to creating a haunted lavatory, Tom provides some pretty ghoulish ideas. Have to admit, though, rigging up a moving ghost in the front garden and scaring the newest batch of trick-or-treaters is rather tempting. But seventeen pumpkins to make a baby-eating yard monster? Makes my harvest of three look pathetic.

Send us pics of anything you do.