Acorn squash cross

Know what happens when you grow 6 or 7 different types of squash in your garden and then take an acorn squash and save the seeds and plant them the next year? So far I have:

Scallop/acorn cross - funniest looking squast I've ever seen lol. Crookneck/acorn cross zuchinni/acorn cross Pumpkin?/acorn cross. Not really sure about this one, but the vine is 10 feet long, growing like a pumpking vine, and setting large round pumpkin like fruit. Have to wait a week or so to see what they are going to do.

They fruit are very identifiable as the base type, and they are also ribbed like an acorn squash. Quite funny looking. Moral of the story - squash will cross with other squash LOL.

Reply to
Ook
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I planted them in a row, next to each other, thinking I would get a row of acorn squash. Last year my acorn squash were small vining plants. These are not small vining plants! There are about a half dozen plants all crowded together.

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weeks prior:
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> Scallop/acorn cross This is the best one so far. The size and color is right, but it has the ribbing that most of the acorn crosses have, and it's pointed on the end. The scallop squash I grew last year had some natural ribbing, but nowhere near as pronounced as this, and they were not pointed on the end.
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> Crookneck/acorn cross This one is not quite as dramatic, but you can see the green tint, and slight ribbing. The second pic is a normal squash.
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> zuchinni/acorn cross Again, you can see the ribbing from the acorn influence, plus it is short and blunt, not long and skinny like zuchinnis are.
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These are new, they look like acorn squash, but the color is off. I'll watch them to see how they develop.
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cross? These fines are already 12 feet long and growing like crazy. The fruit is round, just like my pumpkins. No sign of ribbing yet.
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is noteworthy of these, is that the seeds for *all* of these came out of an ordinary looking acorn squash. Who would have thought that all of this would come out of a normal acorn squash? I wish now I would have planted 30 of these, just to see what kind of variety I would get. The plants are large and quite vigorous. I think that I will save some of the fruit and plant them next year to see what I get. The variety is a surprise, but so far they are very edible.

All of the pics

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Reply to
Ook

Summer squashes (zucchini, crookneck, patty pan), acorn, delicata, sweet potato squash, typical pumpkins* (and mini-pumpkins), and spaghetti squash are all the same species (Cucurbita pepo) and will cross easily. (There are some gourds that are also C. pepo and can be quite bitter and very hard-shelled. If one of those crosses in, the results will be inedible.)

The pepper squashes come in such a variety of shapes, colors and vine lengths that you never know what they will result after a random gene shuffle in your vegetable garden. Could be excellent, could be super stringy, could be bland or could be so bitter you'll spend the rest of the day trying to get that one taste out of your mouth. (I speak from experience.)

*There are a few varieties of 'pumpkins' that are actually buttercup squashes (the 'giant' types, and the blue and white pumpkins, the 'Cinderella' pumpkins). These are of the species C. maxima and are distinguished by the rounded, corky-looking stems and may have a 'button' at the blossom end. There are a few tan colored 'pumpkins' which are varieties of butternut squash, C. moschata. And then there are the 'neck pumpkins' or cushaws (C. mixta).
Reply to
Pat Kiewicz

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