Spaghetti Squash in July

A Summer harvest of Winter squash.

Spaghetti squash is my favorite vegetable... at the moment :)

I consider it the undisputed Queen/King of All Squash.  It's delicious, nutrient dense, and can be added into many dishes.  It's namesake comes from the long, yellow, noodle-like strands that perfectly cooked spaghetti forms--soft but not mushy, with just a hint of crunch, and a mellow, buttery flavor that absorbs other flavors beautifully.  It's considered a Winter squash because of its hard skin, which means it will keep for months in cold storage--improving in flavor and texture all the while.  Ready to eat when the skin turns yellow, but have patience and wait until they become a vibrant yellow and just a tiny bit soft, and you will be richly rewarded.

 Washed and ripening in the shade for a few days.

We ate a fair amount of spaghetti squash last year, which in turn means our worms ate a lot of spaghetti squash scrapings.  The center of a spag squash is similar to a pumpkin--though not so slimy--and packed with dozens or even hundreds of seeds.  We scraped out a fair amount into our worm bin, and squash seeds break down very, very slowly, even in a productive worm bin.

In the Spring, I dug very shallow holes all over the gardens, and filled them with homemade vermicompost (a mixture of worm castings, composted worm bedding, and worms). 

Do you see where this is going?

Happy squashes.

Most of my attempts this year to germinate squash from a seed packet ended in failure.  The spaghetti squash seeds in the vermicompost, however, needed none of my help.  They sprouted everywhere, vibrant and super-fast growing.  We pulled many starts that were in an unfortunate place, but we left as many alone as we could, aside from a drink of water now and then.  The results have been stunning.  Sprouts are still occasionally popping up through the mulch.  

There is a deeper message and methodology to be extracted here, but for now, I'm wide eyed in wonder at the bumper crop of my favorite veggie.  

I've placed an ad locally to sell some.  This is more than we can eat, but we'll do our best to eat it, store it, cook it, freeze it, can it, bake it, or whatever else we come up with during harvest season.