10/9/26 Harvest Notes
We hope everyone has enjoyed the beautiful early autumn weather. This used to be what mid September was like but better late than never?
Farmer’s Pick Half Share: squash or cornmeal, salad mix or sweet potato greens, okra
Farmer’s Pick Full Share: Salad mix or sweet potato greens, basil, squash blossom, cucumbers or eggplant, calabacita squash, salad turnips
**Sometimes one or two farmers pick shares may have an item substituted if we don’t have it right at the moment we pack, so if your share doesn’t exactly match the above that’s why. Usually it does match though!
This week’s seasonal star is: the calabacita squash, which I will now proceed to write way too much about because we are obsessed with it! This is a really interesting variety of squash that does really well in South Texas, and you can only get if you grow it yourself or buy it from us. Its botanical name is the same as the summer squashes and pumpkins you’re more familiar with (Cucurbita pepo), but it is almost as different as a plant can be and still be within the same species. If you’re a gardener you may also know it as Tatume squash. So what is this stuff and how do I use it?? Many people are familiar with the Mexican dish Calabacitas (“Little pumpkins”). Well, it’s called that for a reason. There’s several versions of the dish, but the South Texas version is usually chicken stock with lightly stewed tomatoes, sweet corn, onion and squash. Other versions are heartier and may contain meat and be more of a main dish than a side dish. We personally love to just roast or broil it with some oil salt and pepper. This squash was a frequent feature on the restaurant Pharm Table’s summer menu as well! While today this dish is made with any squash, traditionally it was made with the “little pumpkins” that grew so abundantly throughout Mexico and what is now the US Southwest.
The origins of squash, like many edible plants, are a bit murky. There was a theory at one time that it was domesticated in Texas from a local species in the genus called Cucurbita texana. This has since been debunked through genetic research, but there is no doubt that the calabacitas have been grown in gardens in Texas for a long time. Okay that’s cool but what makes this special exactly? Apart from being delicious, it is virtually the only squash you can plant once and harvest all season. Any Texas gardener will tell you of a horrific pest called the squash vine borer. This insect lays its eggs on squash plants, and its larva consume the stem from the inside out. Terrible! Because squash has such a long botanical lineage in Texas, this is essentially a native insect that co-evolved with squash. But how does that makes any sense if the bug just kills the plant, shouldn’t it be extinct? That’s because the true original form of squash isn’t as a small bush like modern types, it is as a large sprawling tangle of vines. And every place that vine has a leaf and touches the ground (a junction called a node), a new root forms. So as the borer lays its eggs and the larva destroy the original stem, that’s a bummer but it doesn’t matter since a large plant has essentially cloned itself 100 times, once at every node. A bush squash does not have this ability and succumbs. A true ship of Theseus situation!
And the last thing to say about this remarkable squash is that it is also literally a pumpkin. Plant breeders took this species in two directions, one towards bush squashes to eat fresh and another direction to create sprawling plants with fruit that is left on the vine longer to make winter squash (pumpkins). So in the original calabacita we can see the origin of both paths. We can harvest the young fruit to eat fresh or we can wait a few more weeks until they grow orange and you have mini pumpkins that eat a lot like spaghetti squash.