Hoodat~I hope I'm up to my arms in acorn squash! I love it, and it'd be great to have high yields from only 1-2 plants... But guess who's making a comeback? That sickly lil plant was able to push out a flower this morning, along with a few baby leaves! I checked for bugs in the soil, and saw none. Sprayed off the small amount of aphids, and this morning I added some compost (soil amendment) along with a conservative amount of slow-release fertilizer. Cross your fingers that the plant will stick around...

You can clean & dry the seeds, provided that the squash was mature at the time it was harvested. However, you might not want to. For one thing, if it was a hybrid, it will not breed true in the next generation. It could also have been cross-pollinated... which again, will not breed true in the next generation, and could give you some bizarre results. Acorn squash is Cucurbita pepo, which also contains most summer squash, most pumpkins, warted gourds, and spaghetti squash. Since this species is the most widely grown of the squashes, crosses are very commonplace. Bees will fly great distances to feed on the flowers. I grew acorn squash for seed several years ago (with no other squash within 1/4 mile) and I still had 2 crosses out of 18 plants this year. If the squash would not be important for food, my advice would be: go for it. You might get something interesting, or you might get acorn squash. But if you want to be sure of what you are growing, it's better to start with pure seed.

On the aphids, been spraying with soap/garlic spray,but its not making much of a dent. This morning I blasted some away with my hose, but its a very time consuming task when you have a lot of leaves to deal with. Its been hot again, over 100 the past few days. :( I've got about 7 fruit on my vines, 3 are pretty much ready to eat. Only 2 plants have healthy growing vine tips. The other 5 plants don't look all that great. The vine tips have yellowed and burned some. Wonder if the plants are toast. I'm hoping with the cooler weather later this month the plants recover, and if I can keep the aphids at bay. I would sure like to get a few more squash from these plants. Being in N. TExas, we have about another good 2.5 months before a good freeze.

Well I tried a couple of acorn squash cooking techniques this week and the results were just OK, but I think it had more to do with the quality of the squash than the cooking method. I got inspired to make cornbread Thursday night so I baked the squash along with it, for 20 min. in a 350 oven and then left in the oven as it cooled off. Then I put the squash in the fridge and made it the rest of the way on Friday night. I cut it in half and scooped out the seeds. The flesh was almost white--NOT a good sign. The acorn squash I remember liking was yellow. Then I nuked the halves, cut side down, for five minutes. Meanwhile I was preheating the oven and making the stuffing. I stuffed the squash with a rice and kidney bean stuffing, including also corn and salsa and lowfat cheddar cheese. I put the stuffed squash in the oven for another 20 minutes, at 375. I forgot to salt them before stuffing them which was a bit of a negative point. The squash was done and soft, but not as much as I would have liked, and one squash was not cooked up at the top, but I had more than enough for dinner. It didn't have the best taste. If I had to make a guess, I would say it didn't get enough water while growing. I've had bitter eggplants come out of my garden in a drought, even when watered. Also, soil plays a HUGE role in how good vegetables taste. Anyway, I guess that's why most people bake acorn squash with lots of butter and brown sugar. I'm definately going to try more acorn squash recipes, now that I know the trick about parbaking or cooking them whole to make them easier to cut, seed and peel.