Growing Squash Vegetable Plants

When designing your vegetable garden planting for next season, consider a squash vegetable area. There are different kinds of squash and some of them are harvested during the summer, others during the winter. If you’re growing vegetables for eating, this gives two separate times of the year for taking fresh vegetables out of the garden.

Summer squash has a softer skin, and it should be harvested just before it’s completely ripe. Once this vegetable ripens, it can go to being over-ripe and stringy within days, so once it starts to look almost done, get your squash out of the garden before it spoils.

Zucchini looks like an overgrown cucumber, but zucchini seeds are easy to grow. These squash varieties grow very well, and make for a good harvest. Like cucumbers these squash are made up of about 95% water, and are rich in vitamin C (if nothing else!).

Cooking with Squash

Although the best way of eating vegetables according to some people, is raw, and whilst zucchini squash may well be eaten this way and be palatable by most if on a tray of other chopped raw vegetables and dips, yellow squash doesn’t quite fit the bill here. Spaghetti squash tastes wonderful if cut in half and butter placed in the center, and then baked in the oven until cooked. Add a little black pepper before serving.

Squash can be sliced raw, baked in oven, fried, cooked on the barbecue, stir-fried and even put in the microwave. You can chop squash and add it to stews and soups. Slice zucchini thin and add it to sandwiches. If using winter squash, such as pumpkin, then it’s an essential ingredient for any thanksgiving table in the form of the traditional pie.

Small squash, those you grow to only a few inches long/wide, make great Fall table decorations, so be sure to harvest a few early before they get too big, just for this purpose.

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