Boston Marrow Heirloom Squash - Anyone grown it?

Each year we like to buy something that sounds interesting and really different.  Some years we love them, other years we feed them to the cows, lol!

This year we decided on Boston Marrow from Baker Seeds.  http://www.rareseeds.com/boston-marrow-s/


These things are taking over our world, lol! 

Here is one of ours that is 18" long tip to tip and have grown 50% in size in less than 2 weeks.  
Have any of you grown them?  If so what did you make with them?  Any favorite recipes?  I am going to try to grow one of them for seed so I may have some to trade in the fall if you're interested.

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This picture was a couple weeks ago, the vines are now climbing the fence - so if you want to grow them you need LOTS of room, they're currently covering about 20' x 20' for 4 plants.  That medium sized boulder in the foreground is just in front of this squash for size perspective!

Now that's a squash!

I've never grown one of those, but I'm working on a recipe that might be worth trying on it. I make zucchini bread (more like cake) in a steamer. It's really a banana bread recipe that Hubby tweaked for me and I'm gonna try it with carrots this week. I'm betting it would also work with pumpkin, so it could be worth trying on this squash.

I have at least a dozen of these squash growing.  I have no idea what I'll do with all of them, lol!  I think I will dehydrate some of them and turn them into a powder/flour to use for soups and maybe even for a flour for muffins etc. 

We will probably also cook and then freeze soups.  We love pumpkin soup and butternut soups so I imagine this will be similar.

audrey.jeanne.roberts wrote:I have at least a dozen of these squash growing.  I have no idea what I'll do with all of them, lol! 

I bet they'd be great for canning.  Do you get squash vine borer or squash bugs in your area?  Or can you tell if the vine is hollow or not?  I ask because if I could grow just one of those puppies in my area, it would last me thru the winter!

HA...just found this:

"The University of Illinois Extension reports that Blue Hubbard (Cucurbita maxima, “Blue Hubbard”) performs best against squash vine borers, followed by the slightly less resistant Cucurbita maxima “Boston Marrow” and Cucurbita maxima “Golden Delicious” varieties of hubbard squash. The extension also reports that two pumpkin varieties, Cucurbita pepo “Connecticut Field” and Cucurbita pepo “Small Sugar” -- both heirloom varieties -- also perform well. All of these are good keepers and quite decorative in autumn displays."
http://homeguides.sfgate.com/squash-resistant-squash-vine-borer-77620.html

Audrey, if you save some seeds, I would love to trade with ya!

CC

Good info!  I get some squash bugs in one part of my garden.  I hand pick them off and have been able to keep them at bay. 

I have a plant at the far end of my garden and I'll seal off the male and female flowers on a couple of the fruit to hand pollinate.  I'll let you know later in the year.

Squash bugs!  That's what I have on some of the tomatoes and peppers!  I have a hand vac for them.

What nozzle do you use for that, a crevasse tool?  That's a great idea.  I have a jar of water and have been hand picking them off and dropping them in the water.  None so far this year, but doubt that will last!

B&D Dustbuster.  There is a flip up mini-brush but I just leave it down, so I would say it acts like the crevice tool.  They are pretty beaten up inside the canister but I dump it into soapy water to make sure.

I also use a hand vac.  It gets the squash bugs eventually but won't suck up the leaf footed bugs for some reason.

Well... the end of the season is here and we harvested our Boston Marrow.  They were spectacular!  We ended up with 6 really large ones and a few smaller ones on a later planted vine.  






Here's what we learned:

1.  If you don't have a LOT OF ROOM, these aren't for you.  3 plants took up about 25 x 25'  they produced the largest squash at somewhere around 35 to 40 lbs.  

2.  Other than space, they were super easy to grow and very vigorous.  No issues at all.

3.  They are very easy to process.  The skins are thinner than pumpkin so I simply cut the large fruit into chunks and then sliced them into 7-8" sections and cut the skin off.  Chunked them and then either roasted them in the oven or more frequently simply cooked them on low in my crock pot for 8 hours and let them simmer until I was ready to cool and ziploc bag the puree.  My ziploc bags stored 6-7 cups.  I laid them flat in the freezer.

4.  Our "pumpkin pies" made with them were loved by all.  Sweet.  Very smooth puree, not grainy or mealy like pumpkin is.  

5.  I also dried wedges in my dehydrator and then ground them for pumpkin powder/flour.  It can be used for up to 1/4 of a recipe's flour and also for making soups or sauces.  I will play around with it over the winter and make some soups.

6.  We harvested the seeds and sun dried them.  I will eat them raw for snacks - I'm trying to get used to eating raw nuts as they have more nutritional value. 

We will grow them again.  They were fun and tasty and I am donating most of the puree I made to our church for the ladies to make baked goodies with for our youth group fund raiser so it's all going to a GREAT cause!

AJR, those are gorgeous!  And it's a win-win-win for you and your beneficiaries at the Church!

Audrey, It must have taken hours to process all of those. Thanks for sharing.

sanderson wrote:Audrey,  It must have taken hours to process all of those.  Thanks for sharing.

Surprisingly it took less than I anticipated.  Probably 1 to 1.5 hours per squash which included processing the seeds and making the puree and powder.  For something that large I anticipated more, but the softer skin than expected made trimming it down easy.