delicata squash varieties grow and taste report

[meizzwang]

Here's the start of a grow report on various delicata squash varieties. Once harvested we will do some subjective tasting and share the results. This season, we're growing:
1) Candystick Delicata (EFN-experimental farms network)
2) Candystick Delicata (Adaptive Seeds)
3) Zeppelin Delicata-can't remember the source of this one
4) Honeyboat Delicata (botanical interests?)
5) Cornell's Bush Delicata (sold as "Delicata'-sweet winter squash" from Renee's Garden)

I have grown honeyboat delicata and cornell's bush delicata in the past, and both are excellent in my opinion! Both were also very starchy when harvest at peak maturity, at least in my climate. They needed a good 2 month cure to have that incredible flavor that delicatas are well known for.



Cornell's Bush Delicata (the three longer ones in the background, the shorter ones in the foreground were from store bought delicata and were just decent IMO, even with a proper cure):


honeyboat delicata-this is what it looks like at peak maturity, but still needed a 2 month cure to ripen and break down into simple sugars:


Honeyboat delicata (the tan ones) and Cornell's Bush delicata (the long white ones) along with several other winter squash curing in the garage. these weren't quite ready to eat yet when photographed.


Honestly, between the two, they were both absolutely delicious, I can't say either one was tastier than the other once properly cured. Before curing, I'd say the honeyboat delicata was a bit more palatable, but that could have been because it probably ripened before the bush delicata and therefore had more time to break down into simple sugars. How the plants are grown, when they are harvested, and how they are cured plays a huge role with flavor.

Here's this year's grow out!
Overview of this season's delicata patch. The goal of this grow out is to do a seed increase to preserve lines, maybe make a few crosses for fun, and of course, not run out of delicata this winter/spring!


Exact same seed batch of Cornell's Bush delicata that I grew last year. I'm finding that strains can vary from year to year, even from the same source. The seeds are starting to get really old, and I had low germination, but was able to select out 4 good looking individuals:






The row to the left is Zeppelin Delicata (new to me), the row to the right is the proven honeyboat delicata strain, same exact seed packet that was grown last season:



Candystick Delicata: row to the left is from Adaptive Seeds, row to the right is from EFN. Hard to tell from this pic but the Adaptive seeds selection is more vigorous:


To be continued......

[meizzwang]

Some updates on the delicata squash patch, it's growing like crazy! It's so robust, even the neighbors notice it. I think that has a lot to do with the weather this year, it's way warmer than it was last year, and the plants were nowhere near this amazing looking last season.

The nice thing about growing a decent sized population is you can really do some pheno hunting. I guess at this stage, the only thing I can really try to select for is early female flowering, which in turn will result in earlier fruit set and earlier maturity.

Interestingly, none of the Experimental Farm Network's strain of candy stick Delicata have any early flowering individuals. I guess that's to be expected, they didn't grow as fast as the adaptive seeds strain from the getgo. Even so, only 2 out of maybe 14 plants from the Adaptive Seeds candystick delicata strain produced early female flowers! I ended up crossing it with the Cornell bush Delicata and also a very early honeyboat delicata individual!

These pictures were taken 7/1/24, a few days short of a month after the first set of photos were taken in this thread. This is an insane amount of growth in such little time!





The earliest candystick delicata individual has already had its second female flower open. Most other candystick delicata plants are about a week away from their first bloom! Just today, I made the cross between the earliest honeyboat and the earliest candystick, YESSSS! It was a PAIN in the butt to close the flowers beforehand and not break the petals when re-sealing it, but it all worked out well and I got up at the crack of dawn to do it! Very confident this will take:

There's still no signs of female flowers on the cornell bush delicata, but several male flowers have already opened. These things look like Zucchini plants!

[meizzwang]

Candystick Delicata is originally a cross between honey boat delicata and sugar loaf delicata, both of which reportedly originated from a chance tan skinned mutant in a field of otherwise regular delicata. This would imply that the original parents of both honey boat and sugar loaf were siblings: honey boat is the larger, longer tan fruited selection, while sugar loaf is the short, tan fruited selection.

Back to candystick delicata: there appears to be 2 fruit phenotypes: one that looks like honeyboat (longer fruit) and the other that looks like sugar loaf (shorter fruit). There are also two leaf phenotypes: one is mottled (I guess that's the word?) while the other is regular, solid green. The original breeder for all candystick delicata is Carol Deppe, who made the original cross, selfed a select individual and I'm guessing inbred or did sibling crosses for a number of generations to stabilize the traits she was after.

All of my delicata plants this season were sown on the same day and grown under identical conditions. From what I can tell, none of the plants seem to produce roots on the vines, so this limits the overall size and longevity of the plants. In other words, once the plants have maxed out on the number of fruit it can support, the vines stop growing, even if the weather is still favorable for growth. If you want the biggest and therefore most productive plants possible, from the time they are planted in the ground, they need to have a large amount of quality soil near the taproots so the roots can spread as far as possible. In contrast, tropical pumpkins, as an example, produce tons of additional roots on the vines, so you can plant them in a relatively small amount of quality soil initially but then months later, as the vines spread out everywhere, you can add more soil on top of the vines and water them in to keep the plant productive.

Here are some updated pictures of the entire delicata patch that contains 4 different varieties (candystick, honeyboat, cornell's bush delicata, and Zeppelin), all pics below were taken 7/18/24. This is approximately 35 plants. In person, the patch is dense and pretty big! It maybe takes up 200 sq. ft:


Here is the shorter candystick delicata phenotype:


Here is the longer candystick delicata phenotype. Within the candystick delicata strain, there are early maturing plants and much later maturing plants. Most are later maturing. Most of the crosses we made this year focused on selecting for large fruit, high yield and the earliest maturity possible. Out of 20 candystick plants, only 2 were very early flowering (and both are highly productive). Here's one of them, these fruit are the most mature of the batch:


Out of 7 honeyboat Delicata plants, only one was early maturing, so only this one individual was used for crosses:


Here is cornell's Bush delicata. I saw some signs of inbreeding depression, such as male dominant flowers containing stigmas/styles, but on the same plant, most of the male flowers were normal. This strain, from my limited experience, seems to be later fruiting, although I only have 4 plants this year so it's hard to judge:


Bush delicata plants. Structure-wise, they mostly form a compact bush with multiple growth points that barely "vine out" of the bush:


Here is Zeppelin Delicata, notice 100% of them have mottled(?) leaves.


Zeppelin overall seems to be the latest out of all 4 that I'm growing in terms of production. However, I did find one individual that was earlier than the rest, so that one was used for crosses. This isn't the earliest one, I couldn't get into the patch to photograph the fruit, but look how far behind Zeppelin is overall compared to the other strains:

[meizzwang]

Last year, I went to 2 different grocery stores and bought several different delicata squash: the standard yellow one from one store and what appeared to be a honeyboat delicata from another store. Despite all being at peak ripeness (eg. perfect stage to eat), no matter the store, they just didn't taste great for some reason! The rinds on the standard yellow variety was tough. The one that looked like honeyboat was slightly sweet yet bland, and other honeyboat delicata types from "different batches" were flat out barely edible.

Why weren't any of them outstanding? My guess is that in one case, it was genetic: the commercial strain grown out wasn't selected for flavor; instead it appeared to be selected for size, looks, and perhaps shelf life (eg. thicker skin). However, I suspect the main reason was because they were simply picked too early: even to a trained eye, you can't always tell if a well cured delicata was picked at peak maturity. It got me so furious that I vowed to grow a big enough stash this year so that I won't have to go through that again! they were around $4/lb for perspective, you'd think you're only getting the best of the best at that price.

How do you tell if a delicata squash is ripe and ready to harvest? Well, I don't have many ripe delicata right now, but let's go through some photos and this should help:

Candystick Delicata. The fruit has changed color and is slightly yellowish tan. I could probably get away with harvesting now and getting some decently tasty fruit after curing, but I'm going to leave these on until that light green color between the stripes goes away and turns light golden or tan. IMO, waiting until they are at peak maturity is key to getting the best flavor possible out of these, and if you spent this much time and effort growing them, might as well wait a little longer if you can:


Candystick Delicata, not mature. Skin is white-ish, not yellowish tan. I suspect some of the commercial growers here in Northern California are harvesting them at this stage because once cured, you can't tell it was picked too early until it's too late and you've already bought it/it tastes crappy!


Zeppelin Delicata. I haven't grown this one before, but I believe this is a yellow skinned variant once at peak ripeness. Still a ways from being mature. Notice the green stripes haven't colored in yet,dead giveaway that this isn't close to maturity yet. I'm not sure what the skin color will be when at peak maturity, will find out!



Cornell Bush delicata. Not mature yet! Green stripes haven't yet colored up, refer to the first photo of this thread for a pic of a ripe fruit. They should be solid white with dark green stripes. Again, commercial growers can totally get away with picking them now and after curing, they'll look amazing but taste bland.


honeyboat delicata. I could probably get away with harvesting now, but if you want that amazing flavor, it's probably best to wait 1-2 weeks before harvesting this one. The skin color isn't yet fully colored up:


Candystick delicata at various stages of development. The one in the middle is pretty close to ready, while the other two still have a ways to go:


and a few more pics just for fun. None of these pictured below are ready to harvest:





An updated overview pic of the patch: most of the vines have stopped elongating and near the ends of the vines, the plants are doing a hail mary with female flowers: any plant that still has enough energy to produce fruit are giving it one last shot before the plants start to senesce (die back). I don't feel like this patch yielded as much as expected (eg. 6 fruit per plant) but there are for sure enough that we won't be buying any from the store this season!

[FatBeeFarm]

@meizzwang Thank you for these detailed updates. I appreciate them. I can't wait for your taste testing and winner selection later this year.

[Ken4230]

Which ones are bush varieties? I think I have the perfect spot for the bush type. A mound where we dug out to put in a new septic tank. I have been fertilizing and amending it for several years. I think it's ready to be planted now.

I think my neighbor has eliminated the groundhogs and it's the only place that the deer didn't bother 2 weeks ago. I had a single container of Sweet Potatoes sitting on top. Deer never touched them but they ate everything else with tender leaves.

i have down that Honeyboat, Candystick and Cornell's are all bush type.

[meizzwang]

here's a candystick delicata that was harvested early mostly because this fruit was hand pollinated to make seeds. I also wanted to confirm what it was like to eat a delicata at this stage. It probably could have stayed on the vine for another week or two, it was pollinated 36 days prior to harvest. That said, the seeds are fully mature and are drying in the safety of the warm garage.

Here's what's left of the fruit, I ate the rest of it and there was ZERO sweetness due to zero curing and early picking. The fruit of Candystick delicata are deceptively more dense than regular delicatas (Carol Deppe bred them that way): I'm full after eating a little more than half of one squash! It tasted exactly as expected for a fruit picked too early and not given any time to cure (literally baked an hour after picking), was still very enjoyable after being covered in home grown garlic, herbs, olive oil and baked until golden on top. The TEXTURE is 10/10 even at this unripe stage! However, compared to the mind bogglingly amazing flavor of delicata at peak ripeness, this was, without any hesitation, "throw away" material!

Would this fruit that I sampled have tasted great if allowed to cure? Probably, but not as good as a fruit that is given all the time needed to fully mature on the vine and then allowed to cure for the right amount of time.

The color of the skin for candystick delicata should be orangey-tan when ready to eat, this is clearly not ripe yet:


I'm not sure what you'd call the color of the flesh here, but this is a dead giveaway that the fruit isn't at peak ripeness. That flesh should be dark orange when it has that heavenly flavor!


some great thickness to the flesh:


I'll do a REAL taste test once these are actually at peak ripeness, to be continued........

[ddsack]

I am curious which state or area you are gardening in, and the date that you planted seeds or set out pre-started plants. I have a shorter growing season, and leave my all my squash, Delicata and others, on the vines until frost, hoping for them to mature and size up as much as possible, and harden off on the vine. I got a late start this year, so would be surprised if I even get fully grown fruit before cold weather hits.

[meizzwang]

I'm in Coastal Northern California, approx. 20 miles inland from the Pacific ocean, ~38 degrees North latitude, zone 9A (winter lows down to 20F). The weather where I live is unique: it's about 6-15 degrees Farenheit cooler than 10 minutes down the road! It can get up to 110F here, but by mid to late afternoon on the same day, if the wind picks up which it normally does, it can go back down to the mid to low 70's! The average day temperature is probably mid to low 70's during the summer, this year being an exception (estimated high 70's on average this season). Our night temperatures, even during the heat of summer, can go down into the high 40's to low 50's, which is why everything takes super long here even during abnormally warm summers!

I started the delicata indoors April 27th of this year, it's mixed in with all of these other winter squash:


The earliest delicata female flower to open was on July 1st, so 65 days after sowing. That means this year, which is unseasonably warm, it's estimated to take a minimum of 110 days from start to finish, assuming 45 days from pollination for the fruit to fully mature. Most of the delicata will probably take 120-130 days to mature.

[meizzwang]

Which ones are bush varieties? I think I have the perfect spot for the bush type. A mound where we dug out to put in a new septic tank. I have been fertilizing and amending it for several years. I think it's ready to be planted now.

I think my neighbor has eliminated the groundhogs and it's the only place that the deer didn't bother 2 weeks ago. I had a single container of Sweet Potatoes sitting on top. Deer never touched them but they ate everything else with tender leaves.

i have down that Honeyboat, Candystick and Cornell's are all bush type.

Sorry, missed your question! Honeyboat, candystick, and Zeppelin are all long vines, Cornell's bush delicata is a bush type.

[Ken4230]

Which ones are bush varieties? I think I have the perfect spot for the bush type. A mound where we dug out to put in a new septic tank. I have been fertilizing and amending it for several years. I think it's ready to be planted now.
I think my neighbor has eliminated the groundhogs and it's the only place that the deer didn't bother 2 weeks ago. I had a single container of Sweet Potatoes sitting on top. Deer never touched them but they ate everything else with tender leaves.
i have down that Honeyboat, Candystick and Cornell's are all bush type.

Sorry, missed your question! Honeyboat, candystick, and Zeppelin are all long vines, Cornell's bush delicata is a bush type.

I appreciate it , have never grown the bush type . This post and the way you grow them is intriguing. I'm going to give it a go. Have already looked up Cornell's. Thanks again. I may do Honeyboat and just let them run.

[Ken4230]

Double post somehow

[ddsack]

Nice photo of all the seedlings, fat little leaves! What other varieties besides the Delicatas do you grow?

[meizzwang]

Nice photo of all the seedlings, fat little leaves! What other varieties besides the Delicatas do you grow?

Sort of a tangent, but my fault for showing those seedlings! Here's all the winter squash I'm growing this season, my wife rolled her eyes the other day after realizing how much we're going to end up with!
1) new England Long pie (C. pepo):


Thai Mottled pumpkin (C. moschata):


Sweet Mama F1 (C. maxima) (semi-bush type kabocha, highly recommended):


Techicolor Dream Squash (C. maxima?)-only one out of 5 plants turned out to be the expected phenotype:


Sake F1 kabocha squash (C. maxima):


Uncle David's Dakota Dessert (C. maxima), started these late. Very vigorous and productive vines, fruit look like buttercup:


Delica F1 kabocha (C. maxima), started this one late too:


Pueblo highland Landrace (C. maxima), likely a bunch of open pollinated heirloom cultivars mixed together:


this large hubbard looking thing is a dead giveaway it's not the pueblo highland landrace:


Last but not least, Guatemalan Green Ayote (C. moschata), this one has a crazy diversity of shapes, sizes, patterns, and varying degrees of mottling on the leaves from one plant to the other. Very productive, very satisfying to grow so far:



Pics of the squash fields-this isn't all of them, but a good chunk of it:

[Ken4230]

I've been following your reports religiously and every time I get a bad case of "Winter Squash Envy". It's amazing how easy you make it seem. I have only grown: Butternut, Buttercup and Kuri. I like Buttercup the best but Butternut is the easiest to grow and prepare. Brenda likes hers with Cinnamon and Brown Sugar and I like mine almost bare with minimal additives. I just enjoy the sweetness and flavor of the squash. I fixing to dive in pretty deep, and it's all your fault.

[ddsack]

I like seeing the squash growing, your gardens look beautiful and healthy! Yeah, you may need to open a roadside stand to get rid of your excess harvest, or you'll be eating squash for breakfast, lunch and dinner! It's hard to stop though, always a few more varieties that sound interesting. Due to my late start, my Delicata didn't come up, so I didn't bother replanting it. I only have a landrace variety descending from Joseph Lofthouse, which I saved seeds for a few years ago. I have no idea what it will look like, as it might have been pollinated by a Sweetmeat that I had also growing nearby. Looking forward to my surprise.

[meizzwang]

How do you tell when Candystick delicata is ready to harvest and cure? Here are some pics to give you an idea:

you probably guessed this isn't ready yet unless you want to eat them like a summer squash:


Not ready yet. Why? Skin is whitish-yellow and the stripes aren't yet dark green:



Just like the picture above, this one isn't quite mature. Can you get away with picking it at this stage and still end up with tasty squash after curing? I honestly don't know, but I know for sure they can go longer. When picked early at this stage, the seeds inside haven't fully "plumped up' so during curing, they might consume some of the stored starch, which I'm guessing might affect flavor:



Not yet ready to the left, ready to pick to the right. Note the slight difference in color, skin on the one ready to pick is orange-tan and notice how dark green the stripes are:


the side where the squash sat on the dirt. I'm not sure this is a great indicator of when to pick them: even the ones that can go longer on the vine have very orange undersides like this:



Last but not least, how do you tell candystick delicata from Honeyboat apart? Until you cut them open, they're indistinguishable! Honeyboat to the left, candystick to the right, both ready to pick:



The patch is dying down. At this stage, only the very earliest squash to develop are ready, the rest still have maybe 1-2 weeks to go:

[Whwoz]

@meizzwang , thank you for the wonderful pictures, especially the comparison ones, really looking forward to seeing more, especially cut fruit.

Unfortunately we only have generic "Delicata" here Down Under and I had not considered growing them before. I will have to give them a go based on your report.

[meizzwang]

I was "strong-armed" into harvesting a bunch of these squash on the early side. There appears to be some rodents that are attacking my winter squash in general, and they're leaving bite marks on a large number of fruit, which will likely lower their shelf life unless those bite marks callus over before being harvested. I've tried everything and haven't figured out how to trap them or stop them, it's incredibly frustrating. I'm guessing they're field mice because right near the squash that have new daily bite marks on them, there is a small hole in the ground, about the same diameter as a mole hole. IF anyone has had any success managing field mice, I'd love to know: they don't go for snap traps with peanut butter, they avoid sticky traps, and gassing them hasn't done anything.

Fortunately, they're not as interested in the delicata compared to my other squash. Here's a photo of one fruit that was attacked:


Many of the squash are now around 42 days after pollination, so it's pretty close to the magical number of 45, so maybe it's okay that they're being harvested a little bit early. I'm labeling the harvest dates on many of them, and for the ones I know the pollination date (the ones I did crosses with), I'll have very precise data to share.

This is Zeppelin delicata. The one to the left was picked maybe 7 days or less before maturity, the one to the right is pretty much mature at harvest. The yield was pretty lousy, I think I used too much nitrogen and didn't use sufficient P,K. I had 7 Zeppelin plants and they yielded roughly 4 fruit per plant, some of the fruit are still on the vine. However, most of the fruit are a decent size, so that might make up for it:


Honeyboat (tan fruit) and Zeppelin (yellowish fruit). Those blue labels have the harvest date and info regarding maturity: I want to know if you can pick these slightly before they've fully colored up in the field and if that affects flavor after proper curing. Some of these are probably a few days to maybe up to a week too early. I do know if you pick them 2 or more weeks before maturity, that will ruin the flavor (tried it last year):


This is candystick, when the fruit are mature, this is exactly what they look like! The color is messed up in some of the pics because of poor light quality, the color in this photo below is exactly what you see in real life:



Color is altered since the light in my garage isn't great. That same candystick you see in the photo above is in this pile too! Again, blue labels have details of when the fruit were harvested and whether they're slightly immature or fully mature at harvest. There's still more on the vine and I'll probably end up harvesting the rest within a few days:

[meizzwang]

Okay, here's most of the haul, there's still a few out in the field but most have been picked. The yield overall wasn't great for roughly 32 plants(?) For that many plants, if you get 6 fruit per plant on average, that's 192 fruit total, but I think my yield is in the 120-130 range. However, I noticed the candystick delicata produced less fruit than say Zeppelin, but each individual fruit has so much more "meat" to it and they're signifcantly bigger overall. Simply put, maybe weight is more relevant than number of fruit.

Haul part 1: honeyboat (orange), zeppelin, and cornell bush delicata:


Haul part 2: candystick delicata:



Haul part 3: candystick delicata (the rest of them):


and here's what the field looks like now! I swear I know how to grow them, LOL



Some stragglers that I'm leaving on for longer just to make sure the quality will be there after a good cure:


next year, I'm definitely planting them closer to the fence so more of the vines can hang on them. The field mice don't mess with them when they're above ground:




A few plants produced some last minute fruit after harvesting most of the main crop: