Delicata Ripeness

[Setec Astronomy]

So I'm growing Delicata squash for the first time, and when they got to a certain size, they seemed to stop growing and then develop the dark green stripes...I've been waiting for them to get a bit more yellow rather than white, but they don't seem to be changing much so I cut one. It was very easy to get the seeds out, but it seemed very dry and not very sweet (I think I overcooked it a bit which might account for the dryness).

Did I let it get too ripe? I know I've gotten ones from the supermarket which are less yellow and they seemed immature, which is why I was trying to ripen mine a bit more but I'm not sure if I'm doing the right thing.

[Tormato]

It's only July, so my initial guess is that they are way underripe. At harvest time, the stem should be brown or almost completely brown, to begin with. While they are not long storage types, they do sweeten up with age.

When did you plant or transplant?

[ddsack]

Here they are a fall/winter use crop, but I can understand they might mature faster in warmer parts of the country. Did you give it the fingernail test for a hard skin? They should be very sweet when mature.

[Setec Astronomy]

It's only July, so my initial guess is that they are way underripe. At harvest time, the stem should be brown or almost completely brown, to begin with. While they are not long storage types, they do sweeten up with age.

When did you plant or transplant?

I planted them out May 10. So it was 73 days when I cut the first one; this variety says 95 days to maturity.

I read the stem should be completely dry, I didn't know that meant brown. The one I cut the stem was very green, and very hard. I guess I'll let these ripen up a few more weeks. Thanks folks.

[Tormato]

Since I haven't grown Delicata for many years, I decided to do some research. There are many more varieties out there, now. The one I grew was a late variety (about 100 DTM), and I plant out in early June. So, by the time the squash is ripe, the whole plant is getting ready to die. That's likely why I harvest when the stems are close to brown. Perhaps with starting earlier and harvesting an early variety, your stems might still be green.

Another sign I looked for was the background color would be pale greenish white turning to yellowish tan. Overripe would likely be turning to more of an orange color.

Home grown or store bought, cut in half, seeded, and baked, Delicata was always very moist and very sweet. It's my second favorite winter squash, after Tetsukabuto. Those two are so far ahead of any others, that I don't have a 3rd favorite.

[JRinPA]

I grew jester sweet dumpling/delicata for the first time last year. They were excellent, a rather thin skin and nice flavor. Pretty too. But to me they are a winter squash. I didn't pick until October, and picked them all at once. The last planting was sometime in July I think, just to fill a spot, and those were not fully mature. They stored. but the flesh was not as thick.

I have a bunch in this year. They are a bush type, so they complement waltham butternut well. If I only had room for a bush, I put in the sweet dumpling.

[Setec Astronomy]

I grew jester sweet dumpling/delicata for the first time last year. They were excellent, a rather thin skin and nice flavor. Pretty too. But to me they are a winter squash. I didn't pick until October, and picked them all at once. The last planting was sometime in July I think, just to fill a spot, and those were not fully mature. They stored. but the flesh was not as thick.

Ok, Jester is what I'm growing. I got the seeds from Johnny's, they say to "sun cure" the fruits for 5-7 days, or cure them indoors at 80-85°F. I googled sweet dumpling and got a Rupp Seeds page that says "let cure for 10 days". I cooked mine the day I cut it--did I need to cure it, what does that do, how do you folks do it?

[Whwoz]

Curing is probably more to do with stabilising the skin moisture levels so that they keep as long as possible. May also allow a bit of sugar release from starch at those warmer temperatures. Cutting and cooking on the same day is also good. We do that with any winter squash that have not fully matured, often starting to pick a couple of weeks before we intend to harvest those for storage if obvious that some will not mature.

[JRinPA]

If the stem was still very green, I don't think curing would help at that point. That was not ready to treat as a winter squash.

For eating now, as a summer squash, I have never done that with anything except zuchini, yellow squashes, or spaghetti squash. There are some squash that supposedly can be picked, prepared, and eaten as summer squash or allowed to mature/cure/store like winter squash. I don't know if delicata is one of them. I would not expect anything picked green to have developed any kind of sweetness.

For a winter squash you generally pick right before frost. . The stems are hopefully dried, brown, and hard. Then you cure and store and eat them Oct-May. We do a little triage every month and eat the ones that look like they might not last much longer. The best tasting/longest storing are the ones with the hardest, brown stems without spots or bites. And they keep developing flavor as they age, right up until they collapse and rot.

That's how I treated Jester. The older plantings had indeed gone from white to yellow/orange, with harder brown stems. They stored well. The later plantings were still more white colored, and the stem still greenish, when picked before frost. Those had thinner flesh and not as sweet.

I'll look for some pics from last year.

[JRinPA]

Sept 2 2021, the day after the hurricane and the corn was laid down. I still didn't pick any of that Jester for a good month. There was about 30-odd among 4 or good bushes growing under and next to the corn. This was an earlier planting, and was well ripe by October.

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[Setec Astronomy]

Thanks JR...I guess I need to leave them longer. I wish my plants looked as healthy as yours did in that picture, I got lazy with spraying and mine are all blighty.

[JRinPA]

That may be just due to me planting later...I don't like to plant winter squash too early. The last few years that is usually mid-late June is my earliest and that with seed or young transplants. I may have missed it this year though, with the lack of rain, I have spaghetti and butternut that is in long time, still very small plants, and about to be swarmed by squash bugs. Another comm gardener has great looking huge butternut and spaghetti squash already formed...they likely seeded 3-5 weeks earlier than me and caught the May rains, and well hosed when needed since. This year I'm beginning to doubt mine will catch up, 3-1/2" of rain in two spurts since May is about all we've gotten.

This year I put the Jester in as transplants end of June to replace 20' of snow peas / spinach and in the center of two double rows of corn that replaced near 30' of snap peas / spinach or snap peas/beets. Both spots are looking good, but it must be more than 15 plants now that I think about it. We won't need any butternut.

And above when I said the "later" planting were still more white, thinner fleshed, and not as sweet, I should have added, more of them rotted in storage, sooner. I agree with above poster @Whwoz that said if they looked too immature to finish, better to just pick early and eat them fresh. They did not hold as well in storage.

[Setec Astronomy]

about to be swarmed by squash bugs

Uh oh, do I have that to look forward to now? I so far have dodged the SVB's.

[JRinPA]

We had some delicata last week and I brought some more up yesterday but didn't get around to them. Probably going to cook them tonight. @Setec Astronomy how did yours turn out and do you have any in storage yet? Some of ours rotted this year in storage, the bugs were pretty hard on them.

This year I think I will get my squash in earlier. Last year there I missed the good planting weather in May for some stuff and planting a week late cost me three weeks of early growth.

[Tormato]

We had some delicata last week and I brought some more up yesterday but didn't get around to them. Probably going to cook them tonight. @Setec Astronomy how did yours turn out and do you have any in storage yet? Some of ours rotted this year in storage, the bugs were pretty hard on them.

This year I think I will get my squash in earlier. Last year there I missed the good planting weather in May for some stuff and planting a week late cost me three weeks of early growth.

I've heard that Delicata is a very poor storage squash. I've never kept them past mid-December. Of course, being so tasty, I usually use them all up by Thanksgiving.

[Setec Astronomy]

We had some delicata last week and I brought some more up yesterday but didn't get around to them. Probably going to cook them tonight. @Setec Astronomy how did yours turn out and do you have any in storage yet?

I saw this thread in the new posts, and said "hey, I know that guy Setec Astronomy". All my squash (Delicata and patty pan) got nailed by SVB. I had 2 Delicata plants and I think I got 3 squash, they weren't very good. Gonna try again this year and be more proactive with the BT.

On a side note, I live in the 'burbs and I'm not aware of anyone nearby who grows vegetables. Since I have started doing this it just amazes me how many plant-specific pests I have seen, and where they come from. I have had squash vine borers, three-lined potato beetles that love my ground cherries and nothing else, tomato hornworms, army worms on my Brussel sprouts. It just makes me wonder how far those potato beetles came, and from what, to eat my ground cherries. Although I have an idiot savant friend whose idiocy I try to ignore but may have had a savant moment when he suggested they might have come with the plants when I bought seedlings. Which is why I try to grow all my own seedlings now.

My point is, where did these squash vine borer moths come from? Do they eat something else while waiting for someone to plant squash? Or do they come from someone else's squash plants a half mile away? Or do my neighbors have secret gardens that I don't know about? (I'm pretty sure the answer to that last one is no)

[JRinPA]

Growing squash is a trial, for sure. I don't think I've had much trouble with SVBs on butternut or delicata. Mostly it is zuchini and pumpkins that they destroy, for me. And striped cucumber beetles on all of them, but particularly destructive to cucumbers and cantaloupe.

Half mile away, for sure SVB moths can fly that, they are just dust in the wind, and the wind is often blowing at least 10-15 mph up a few hundred feet, and all they have to do is drift and not get eaten by a bird. But I doubt they have to go that far - a half mile radius is 3/4 of a sq mile. I think they can smell their specific chemical/odor/fragrance/whatever from pretty far downwind, though. And I have to think there are gardens within just about any half mile radius in New Jersey. Maybe not in the middle of the barrens, but it is the garden state after all.

I suppose it is possible that bugs came with the starts, but they would find you either way.

I am no particular bug doc, but this is they way I see it. The SVB are a moth. When the ground is the right warmth they know it is time to emerge as adults. They dig their way up and dry their wings and start looking for that place that smells and feels right. And these SVB moths are really attuned to these particular smells, because when man started growing these things all over the place in a monoculture, it was this particular type of moth that thrived on the vines. Their goal is to quickly mate and lay eggs. They don't just lay a few eggs, they lay a bunch, as many as their remaining bodily resources can produce, where ever they feel safe doing it, and everywhere they smell squash. The eggs quickly hatch and the larvae are tiny. I have to think that most of the energy in their life cycle is harvested as larvae, getting fatter and fatter inside juicy sweet vines, without even getting a tan. When big enough, they burrow and eventually morph into a pupa. Those cigar type casings. Next April and May when the earth warm up, they start waking up and emerging all over again.

To break the cycle you can rotate crops and rototill in the fall, even take years off from planting any squash, but they are winged. If you plant it, they surely try to come find it from miles away. Because these SVB moths have followed man since the beginning of agriculture and they know their particular target crop very well.

[meizzwang]

Some pictures of Delicata squash ready to harvest. I grew these outdoors in Northern California in a cool, coastal climate, and they took FOREVER to grow! I suspect if you leave the delicata squash in the field until the stems turn brown, this is one of the reasons why they don't store long: they are left out in the elements for too long! On the other hand, delicatas with brown stems are probably sweet right at harvest because they've been left out long enough for the starch to break down into simpler sugars.

Right at harvest, my delicatas were edible and flavorful but all of them were starchy: I picked them at peak maturity, not at the peak "ready to eat" stage! The flesh inside wasn't very dark orange yet either! They required curing for a good 2 months before they started to taste incredible! Curing involved putting them in my warm detached garage for about 2 weeks to "dry up" slightly and then they were stored in a cool garage for the rest of the time.

I keep reading over and over again that delicatas don't have a good shelf life, but I think that depends on how they are grown, harvested, and stored. I had some delicata squash last until April and they were harvested early October! In my cool climate, they took a very long time to develop and there was no disease pressure on the plants, even as they senesced! Other winter squash were covered in powdery mildew by the time their fruit were ready to harvest.

Anyways, IMO, if you want your delicata to store as long as possible, pick them at peak maturity, not at peak ripeness. I'll define peak maturity as the stage where they have produced their peak amount of starch and won't get any tastier with proper curing. I'll define peak ripeness as the stage where the fruit tastes the best.

Anyways, here's most likely Cornell's Bush Delicata (longer white squash in the background), I got these seeds from Renee's garden, the description said it was a rambling vine but these produced a bush so I assume it's Cornell's Bush Delicata. The shorter delicatas in the foreground are from random seed that I collected from store bought delicata, they weren't as good! They were also a bush delicata, but some segregated back into acorn squash/delicata phenotypes that didn't improve in flavor even with a proper cure. This is exactly what they looked like when they were harvested:


Here's the delicata patch at harvest, the vines completely stopped growing but they never got powdery mildew despite my climate being prime for the disease:


Here is honeyboat delicata, this is exactly the stage you want to harvest them if you want them to both taste really good and also store for a long time! These tasted incredible!


Another honeyboat delicata. Notice the color of the skin isn't as dark, this one isn't quite mature:


These two fruit pictured below are honeyboat delicata, not quite mature. The one in the background got bleached by the sun a little bit, it still ended up tasting great:


So the big question is, if you harvest them at peak maturity, how do you know when they've been cured properly and are ready to eat? What I've found is that the best time to eat them begins when the base of the stem, right where it's connected to the flesh, starts turning yellow to brownish. Of course, this assumes you picked them at peak maturity, not at peak ripeness! If the stems are brown and they were mature before the stems turned brown, they're probably ready to eat. In addition, with cornell's Bush delicata (the white one), the green streaks start turning yellow-orange-ish, especially on the side where the squash sat on the dirt. With honeyboat delicata, the tan color becomes darker orange when they are ready to eat. Here's some of the winter squash harvest after curing for a while, some of the delicata in this picture were ready to eat! Unfortunately, I didn't take close up pics of the stems:


I'm sure some of you are wondering, is honeyboat delicata better tasting than cornell's bush delicata? While the answer is subjective, when it came time to select which one to bake, I never favored one over the other: they both tasted equally great and I'm growing both of them again this year (as well as many other delicata varieties to see if there's a difference). That said, I had many store bought delicatas that were at peak ripeness, but the skin was slightly tough and the flesh was sweet yet bland, even the organic ones were this way! Some of them were so bad I couldn't eat them, and they were expensive! There's no knowing if they were from poor commercial genetics or just not properly grown because they were certainly at peak ripeness!

Winter squash madness 2024:

[Whwoz]

Welcome to the Junction from Down Under @meizzwang . Thanks for that informative post, would you be kind enough to introduce yourself so that we can learn a bit more about you and where you live. Also would you please consider setting up a separate grow log so that we can track your experience with these over your season, been considering growing these for a couple of years now and would love to see how they go.

[Tormato]

Some pictures of Delicata squash ready to harvest. I grew these outdoors in Northern California in a cool, coastal climate, and they took FOREVER to grow! I suspect if you leave the delicata squash in the field until the stems turn brown, this is one of the reasons why they don't store long: they are left out in the elements for too long! On the other hand, delicatas with brown stems are probably sweet right at harvest because they've been left out long enough for the starch to break down into simpler sugars.

Right at harvest, my delicatas were edible and flavorful but all of them were starchy: I picked them at peak maturity, not at the peak "ready to eat" stage! The flesh inside wasn't very dark orange yet either! They required curing for a good 2 months before they started to taste incredible! Curing involved putting them in my warm detached garage for about 2 weeks to "dry up" slightly and then they were stored in a cool garage for the rest of the time.

I keep reading over and over again that delicatas don't have a good shelf life, but I think that depends on how they are grown, harvested, and stored. I had some delicata squash last until April and they were harvested early October! In my cool climate, they took a very long time to develop and there was no disease pressure on the plants, even as they senesced! Other winter squash were covered in powdery mildew by the time their fruit were ready to harvest.

Anyways, IMO, if you want your delicata to store as long as possible, pick them at peak maturity, not at peak ripeness. I'll define peak maturity as the stage where they have produced their peak amount of starch and won't get any tastier with proper curing. I'll define peak ripeness as the stage where the fruit tastes the best.

Anyways, here's most likely Cornell's Bush Delicata (longer white squash in the background), I got these seeds from Renee's garden, the description said it was a rambling vine but these produced a bush so I assume it's Cornell's Bush Delicata. The shorter delicatas in the foreground are from random seed that I collected from store bought delicata, they weren't as good! They were also a bush delicata, but some segregated back into acorn squash/delicata phenotypes that didn't improve in flavor even with a proper cure. This is exactly what they looked like when they were harvested:


Here's the delicata patch at harvest, the vines completely stopped growing but they never got powdery mildew despite my climate being prime for the disease:


Here is honeyboat delicata, this is exactly the stage you want to harvest them if you want them to both taste really good and also store for a long time! These tasted incredible!


Another honeyboat delicata. Notice the color of the skin isn't as dark, this one isn't quite mature:


These two fruit pictured below are honeyboat delicata, not quite mature. The one in the background got bleached by the sun a little bit, it still ended up tasting great:


So the big question is, if you harvest them at peak maturity, how do you know when they've been cured properly and are ready to eat? What I've found is that the best time to eat them begins when the base of the stem, right where it's connected to the flesh, starts turning yellow to brownish. Of course, this assumes you picked them at peak maturity, not at peak ripeness! If the stems are brown and they were mature before the stems turned brown, they're probably ready to eat. In addition, with cornell's Bush delicata (the white one), the green streaks start turning yellow-orange-ish, especially on the side where the squash sat on the dirt. With honeyboat delicata, the tan color becomes darker orange when they are ready to eat. Here's some of the winter squash harvest after curing for a while, some of the delicata in this picture were ready to eat! Unfortunately, I didn't take close up pics of the stems:


I'm sure some of you are wondering, is honeyboat delicata better tasting than cornell's bush delicata? While the answer is subjective, when it came time to select which one to bake, I never favored one over the other: they both tasted equally great and I'm growing both of them again this year (as well as many other delicata varieties to see if there's a difference). That said, I had many store bought delicatas that were at peak ripeness, but the skin was slightly tough and the flesh was sweet yet bland, even the organic ones were this way! Some of them were so bad I couldn't eat them, and they were expensive! There's no knowing if they were from poor commercial genetics or just not properly grown because they were certainly at peak ripeness!

Winter squash madness 2024:

The story I heard, was that years ago there was some sort of cross/mix up with seeds, and a huge amount of retail delicata squash that year were bland or slightly bitter tasting. A new seed source solve the problem.

I've always had excellent luck with store bought delicatas, they being sweet, moist and flavorful. So, I rarely take up space in the garden, planting it. My favorite to grow is Zeppelin delicata.

And, for longer storage, keeping squash blemish free, I take those thin foam trays that supermarket meat come in, trim them so that the shape is flat, wash them good in hot soapy water, and place one under each squash so that it doesn't sit in mud.