Breed your own Squash Project

[veggiechicken]

Not one of my nutty challenges but from RealSeeds

http://realseeds.co.uk/breedsquash.html

A bit more reading needed for me before I commit!

[Snoop Puss]

Looks like an interesting project.

[Jimmy]

How do you know you won't get a poisonous one ?
Jimmy

[Small pumpkin]

I'll be doing some reading up on that as well. That sounds very interesting

[Small pumpkin]

Now I've read it, I'm even more tempted. Wouldn't be able to start till next year. I don't have the space for another 12 squash plants this year.

[Guest]

One day I will get around to breeding my own tom, pea, squash and apple. Until then there are still too many varieties already in existence for me to try. Also I would rather know the parentage to start off with rather than skip 1-2 years in the process of stabalisation, just my long winded nature I guess.

How do you know you won't get a poisonous one ?
Jimmy

As far as I am aware poisonous ones tend to be when the ornamental gourds have gotten into the mix. However, poisonous ones tend to taste bitter and can affect courgettes as well. I think there is a VC thread kicking about somewhere. So yes - courgette or squash, if it tastes bitter don't eat it!!!

[Kirk]

Would be a 2 year minimum exercise since you would start this year with minimum of A and B squash.
Then you would have to hand pollinate such that you had AxB and BxA as the pollinated fruit. Must exclude the possibility of some inconsiderate bee ambling along and doing any pollination.

Eat those results and keep the seed then plant that seed next year and see what came out of the mix.

This where somewhere like Moreveg comes in as you can buy 3 varieties relatively inexpensive and so have A, B C. You get 6 permutations from that set of 3. So buy 6 plastic sealable tubs to mark up what the pollination cross was on them for seed storage.