Thanks to their hard-as-nails outer skins, squashes will store very well from harvest time (around October) right through to the following April, which is an impressive six months. They are an incredibly versatile and delicious veg to have around – equally at home in a salad, risotto, stew, roast, tart or quiche – and the bigger ones have a serious amount of eating in them.

I like growing all vegetables, but I love the ones that are sown once during the year and store well, such as carrots, parsnips, onions, garlic, etc. These are the real high-return crops, where it’s possible to become self-sufficient (or close to it) with a single act of seed sowing. Squashes fit this category also.

So easy are squashes to grow, and so well do they store, that I always find it strange that more commercial growers here don’t get in on the act, particularly with the more unusual varieties of squashes. Generally speaking, most supermarkets only stock butternut squash (and usually imported ones) – it’s a shame they are not more adventurous because there are far sweeter and more flavoursome varieties out there. My favourite of all squash varieties is the ghostly, grey-blue Crown Prince, which despite its enormous size and pumpkin-like demeanour, has an incomparable sweet flavour.

It’s a good time of the year to sow squashes, so this week I got stuck in. If you sow too early, they will be ready for planting out too early, so around now is perfect. I am growing the squash varieties Crown Prince, Delicata and Uchiki Kuri, and the pumpkins Baby Bear and Vif Rouge d’Etampes. This year I am going a bit nuts on squashes on a relatively unpromising piece of land beside the big tunnel. I turned the soil, added plenty of compost, poultry manure pellets and seaweed dust and covered it all down with mypex to suppress weeds. I am hoping to grow about 100 plants, and sell those we don’t use. If it sounds hare-brained, that’s because it is. Will report back soon.

Pot up courgettes, squashes, etc

This time of the year is all about managing the timing of when you plant seedlings out in the garden. Do it too early and the plants will be knocked back by night-time cold. Do it too late and the plants become pot-bound – that is, they have grown too large for their container, resulting in tangling of the roots (and possibly bolting issues later on). I’m still too suspicious of the weather to plant out relatively tender plants like courgettes and squashes. By potting them on in to bigger pots, you buy yourself a couple of extra weeks where you can keep them indoors.

I sow courgette, squash, cucumber and pumpkin plants in large module trays, but they grow incredibly quickly and need to be put in to larger pots within two weeks or so. Simply pop the seedling out of its module, put a little compost in the base of a bigger pot, place the seedling in carefully and fill it in with compost. It pays to water the plants well about an hour beforehand – the seedlings pop out of the pots much easier then – and of course you need to water again after you have finished potting them on. CL