Wednesday, October 27, 2010

Volunteers

As you may know, our garden sits on my husband's family property about 5 miles away from where we live.  Out there, we have several compost bins for our garden scraps, for the food scraps of those that live there and for those from a local vegan take out restaurant.  This year we had a volunteer squash plant growing out of one of those bins.


A monster squash plant, to be precise.


And that one plant yielded this:


I could not grow a lovelier plant if I tried (because believe me!  I've tried!).


Plenty enough to go around!!!

We took a few, gave a few to my sister in law, and our friends at the restaurant.  We will store ours along with those we purchased from our local organic farm.  Butternuts are probably the easiest veggie to store.  Seriously, you need no special anything.  Just a cooler room in your home.

To cure the squashes, leave them in the sun or in a sunny window for about a week or 2.  This allows the skin to harden to a nice protective layer.  After they have cured, put them in a room (or closet) that stays somewhere around 50 - 60 degrees, and they will be very happy until spring.

Just as a note, if you are storing less than perfect squashes, the storage life may not be quiet so long.

Very very rewarding!

No comments: