Amber, is your squash plant just beginning or already gone though a long harvest? In the 2nd case, I envy you! I used to trim the lower leaves of my squash towards the end of the season when they start to get powdery mildew. Dave is right the trim does encourage pest by harboring them (mine in this case are earwigs). But jim is correct leaving sick leaves on is not good option neither. Decisions decisions! Not sure how long your season is. But this year I'm going to take a different approach. My plan is successive planting by sowing a second crop. This plan should work if our warm season is long nough this year. In theory, when the first round of squash start to get mildew, I will remove the entire plant and start harvesting the 2nd crop. To be honest, this plan is pending on space available.

First, is it a hybrid variety? If so, the seed won't be true but rather will revert to the characteristics of the original breeds. Second, were you growing any other kinds of C. pepo summer squash or pumpkin? If so the seed may not be true because the bees might have crossed them. If the answer to both of the above is no, you'll need to let a squash ripen FULLY -- all the way to the deep, golden-orange, almost pumpkin-like color with a HARD rind like a winter storage squash. It may take until the plant dies down to get it to the right stage. After that its easy -- cut the squash open, scrape out the seed, wash the stringy goo off (this can take some doing -- getting most of it is OK), and dry the seed thoroughly in a cool, dry, dark place with good air flow. Squash seed doesn't have to be fermented like tomatoes because it doesn't have the gel-coat on it.

Hazel, I grow as much of our food as I can, and that means spending tons of time preserving the harvest (via canning, dehydrating, blanching/freezing and root cellar type storage) so we'll have home-grown produce year-round. I buy a mixture of organic/non-organic food from the grocery store. I'd love to buy only organic food but we have a budget to live within and it does not allow for only organic food. I do not know if non-organic foods are less healthy and will leave that debate to the food scientists. What I do know is that I'd rather eat food that was grown in the most natural way possible. For me, eating as much naturally-grown food as possible is a personal choice. I am a 16-year cancer survivor and as soon as I was diagnosed with cancer, I began eating only an organic vegan diet. The vegan part was really hard for me because I grew up in Texas and love meat, especially beef. My family wasn't crazy about a vegan diet, but put up with it (at least when they ate at home) for me. After about 6 months, I began adding meat and dairy back to our diet. We still eat healthier that we used to but not as healthy as we did during those six months. When the National Organic Standards Board was developing the standards to be used by certified organic growers, there was much debate and compromise. Some organic food advocates felt the standards were watered down and weren't completely happy with the standards as written and implemented. Some organic advocates were disappointed and felt the organic standards were too lax and were quite vocal about that. I watched the debate with interest. For me, though, I'd rather eat organically-grown food even if the standards under which it is grown are somewhat less than perfect. One reason I grow as much of our produce as I can is because that is the only way I know exactly what was or wasn't sprayed on it. If the choice is between a strawberry grown in our garden with no chemicals sprayed on it versus a conventionally-raised strawberry that may have been sprayed with various synthetic products from 1 to 3 times a week, guess which one I'd rather be eating? Just because a pesticide, herbicide or fungicide is organic in origin does not necessarily mean it is safer than a pesticide, herbicide or fungicide that is synthetic in origin. There are some organic products I've never used and never will use. I'm planting my 18th spring garden right now (my first was planted a year before we broke ground for the house), and I have used a synthetic pesticide once (last year, to save the garden from huge hordes of grasshoppers) and it almost killed me. I won't say I'll never use a synthetic pesticide again but I hope it will be another 18 years before I feel like that is the only option left to save my garden. I even use organic pesticides sparingly and, in fact, most years I don't use them at all. I use them very selectively and only for the worst of pests. Sometimes I'll spray neem oil, for example, on one specific plant that has a pest issue but won't spray the whole garden or even that whole row. I'd rather hand-pick and use other methods to remove the pests. I never spray Spinosad because it is a broad-spectrum pesticide that can harm some beneficial insects, but I'll use it in a granular product (Slug-Go Plus) that I sprinkle on the ground to kill pill bugs and sow bugs. I also use a granular organic fire any product that contains Spinosad. Other than neem and Spinosad, I sometimes use a product containing Bt 'kurstaki' on brassicas and that's about it. I mostly rely on our population of beneficial insects to help keep the pest levels low, and on hand-picking bugs or using floating row covers to exclude them from crops. I think that produce grown in the most natural way possible tastes better, and we all know that produce fresh from the garden is the best-tasting, healthiest food around. I like being able to harvest in the morning and then use some or all of that harvest in the meals we eat that day. And, on the list of what really matters, the use of synthetic pesticides bothers me the most. I have less of an issue with synthetic fungicides or fertilizers. I think every gardener has the right to grow their plants, whether ornamental or edible, in whatever manner they choose. I just choose to grow mine as naturally as I can. When I first transitioned from conventional gardening to organic gardening in the 1990s, I essentially kept gardening exactly as I always had with the only change being that I was substituting products that were organic in origin for those that were synthetic in origin. After moving here, I began to take steps to go beyond that and that was the beginning of my progression to go sort of beyond merely growing organicallyand focus more on gardening in the most natural and sustainable way. Whether you will be pleased with the winter squash/pumpkins you chose as fall decorations depends on whether you think all autumn pumpkin displays must include big orange pumpkins. I love all the C. moschatas for fall decorations because I like their various shades from buff-colored Seminole to the almost brownish-buff color of Musquee de Provence. For 7 or 8 years before the squash vine borers found us here, I always grew huge numbers of winter squash and pumpkins in all colors---including orange, yellow, white, buff, green and some that were speckled, splotched, striped or warted. It was fun while it lasted and they made great autumn displays, but the SVBs have made it impossible for me to have that wide variety of colors now, so I am content with the colors of the C. moschata group, which mostly are in a range of buff-colored shades. Having become used to what I have now in terms of sizes and colors, I am content with pumpkins that aren't traditional jack-o-lantern types. And, sometimes I want a big orange pumpkin in the fall and plop it down in the middle of the display with my home-grown ones. Dawn

LOL! What fun to come in here and find such entertainment :) And an award!! You can be sure the trophy will be proudly displayed along with my eight "West Virginia State Quack Grass Digging Championship" trophies. For those who tuned in late, this is the thread that started all this: zucchini as winter squash? So I see that moschata was not originally specified -- no wonder I began the autumn with a spare bedroom full of cartoon-like over sized squash resting on plastic sheeting in case they explode! I'm always looking for ways to extend the garden produce through the winter, so this has been fun and motivating, if not quite yet successful. My personal opinion about Trombocino: insipid as summer squash, deliciously sweet as winter squash. Could it be that it is simply a winter squash that's a summer squash wannabe? Sponges for dinner! (my dog likes them too)