Great post - thanks for the first hand experience! We kept our squash in the basement last year. It didn't do so well. We kept it in the coolish dining room this year and it did better but I don't have room for 70 of them in there 🙂

The spaghetti squash seems to being doing the best. I have one that is a science project. It's over a year old and still looks edible. I don't think we'll eat it - probably feed it to the chickens soon but I wanted to see how long it would last. The smaller squashes - the green rounded ones seem to go the fastest. I think next year I will grate and dehydrate the ones that don't last as long and just keep the really great keepers.

I hope to do more seed saving this year. I haven't done much at all. I do have a lot of seeds from last year so I'm just going to see how it goes. I am so looking forward to getting my hands in the dirt!!

Yes, We have this mystery, white pumpkin from a year and a half ago. Its still sitting in the livingroom mocking me. It was dumster dived from a green bin just after halloween. We filled up the hatchback that year on what the trophy wives threw away after decorating. Some of ours are their decendants. I could get philosophical and say...Its sort of the story of my life.

I found the same thing as Anita with the squash.
The buttercups that I kept are starting to show some signs of age and a few are getting soft spots.
The butternut however are still firm and holding color very well.
What cabbages I did save from the worms this year are doing ok also...I just tear off the wilted leaves every few weeks and no issues.
Ya, they get a bit smaller every time, but I still have cabbages!
I'm gonna give the zuchinni thing a try also!

I found the same thing as Anita with the squash.
The buttercups that I kept are starting to show some signs of age and a few are getting soft spots.
The butternut however are still firm and holding color very well.
What cabbages I did save from the worms this year are doing ok also...I just tear off the wilted leaves every few weeks and no issues.
Ya, they get a bit smaller every time, but I still have cabbages!
I'm gonna give the zuchinni thing a try also!

Yes, The buternut seem to be the end all and be all Survival sqash. I learned this after we still had them on the shelf when we were ready for harvest the next year. Ive been preaching this plant since. I give them as gifts to anyone I meet with prepping tendencies. Not to eat, but as a gift of free seeds. Im most exited about the dogfood part. When others are thinking of eating their dogs is the exact time I need them backing my play. Our cabages all split this year so we will try a new variety next season. Not a big cabbage guy but if we can get a type that store well, chickens like cabbage in the winter. Our chickens are fussy eaters, spoiled with store bought food, and I need to find something easy to grow as a food replacement. I havent seen the giant Zuke thing done by anyone but mom and I wonder if its from her growing up poor. Is there anyone out there that has tried drying choke cherries as winter chicken food. I might try drying and grinding them but it might be a big waist of time. I hear the First Nations ate them this way, dried seeds and all as a protein sorce.

The butternut is very good but do consider also looking at Sweet Meat , its an amazing winter keeper.

The bigger zuke is something I do all the time because I can alot of my mock pinnapple fruit, and its made from extra large Zuchinni, I also make Zuchinni jam, Mock Apple pie filling with them and of course I make a lot of relish that is made with the large firm aged ones as well.

I also like to grate the bigger firm peices after peeling and seeding out, and drying them and then adding back into soups/stews in my dried veggie mixes.

As for the Chokecherries, I don't have enough available to me to use it as chicken food, Its to valueable in my mind to make winter juice for boosting health to be used for the birds.

Let me know if you find that works for you, you must have lots available, good for you..

In case yiou wanted to learn more about how to can up that mock pinnapple, here is the write up I had done on it.

I remember Grandma helping can when she came to the farm I was on as a little one, and and I believe this is Grandma Recipe, but if there is one thing I have learned is that with as many aunties as I have, there seems to be almost as many tweeks to these recipes as there are relatives..

So back in the day, pinapple was a HUGE treat and one that could not be easily come by for the average family, nor would it have stretched very far with the size of the family.

So along comes Mock Pinapple to the rescue. If at all possable you want to grow Marrow Sqaush, I can’t find it in any catalog these days but you can get it at seed-savers, or for me locally, I can find it at Seed Saturday still being raised each year by some familys that sell open and old seeds locally each spring. This is a huge oval yellow sqaush. In a pinch, you can use large overgrown zucchini, by which I mean at least two or three feet long and allowed to get quite hard but not fully ripe either, you can tell the difference by the seeds, if the seeds have turned to the point of being able to collect them, don’t use for this recipe.

When its ready to havest you can then peel it, and take all the seeds out, (Peels to piggy, seeds to chickens) and then you cut it into stripes and then cut the stripes into cubes that will look very much like a pinapple tidbit, Fill your big old steel roaster (the one that covers two burners for canning) and fill it up, measure your cups, and you want a 1 to 4 rato in terms of sugar, so if you have 40 cups of fruit, you want ten cups of sugar, mix the fruit and sugar together, slap the lid on and let it sit overnight on the counter.

In the morning, the sugar will have pulled the juice out of the marrow fruit and will be most likely covering the fruit, Put your pot on the nice med heat and start getting your jars ready, (cleaned, boiled and held in boiling water to keep very hot etc), now take three to six lemons and fine slice them, I am talking maralade thin, and then cut each wheel into six and add them and the juice to the marrow, at this point if you have it, you can also add one huge can of pinapple(but you don’t have to if you don’t have it). Bring to a boil and cook for about 20 to 40 min, you want the marrow to turn a golden clear color, they will look very much like pinapple when ready, then hot can like normal.. Remember to wipe your mouths down with straight vinager, not water to help make sure you are not bringing added germs into the jar. Hot water bath the jars for 15 min pints, and 20 min for quarts.

They will keep in good qaulity for up to two years and then start to lose firmness, at which point, you can use them in baking but they will not be as good for fresh eating. This is a way to take a very little pinapple and make alot of pinapple lookalike,taste a like.

Now of course, I can’t just stay with only that one way, I have found two other ways I very much like..

Extra Version one, Lose the Lemons (but replace with one cup of lemon juice) and add in one can of pinapple juice, it gives a added booster of flavor to the jars, and any extra juice can be canned and used as a base for a drink.

Extra Version two, replace the pinapple with fresh cut up peaches Dice the peach flesh into cubes, Take out six to eight cups of the hot marrow juice, and pour over your peach skins in a small steel pot, simmer, mash and then strain, putting that wonderful peach flavor back into the big batch, you can use as little as ten percent peach to as much as twenty-five percent peach and it will give you a peach cocktail mix that is lovely, and again, what a way to stretch a fruit out. but this one will only keep a year.

Extra Version three, just use the marrow on its own with bottle lemon juice added for the extra acid, and throw in a couple peices of fresh ginger in a cheese cloth back, it adds a wonderful depth of flavor to the batch without effecting the look of it. Of course remove the cheese cloth before starting to jar it up.

We might not be able to grow Pinapple in Canada but we certainly can have wonderful rows of jars of mock pinapple to enjoy though the winter.

thankyou cernun, for sharing that very valuable information.

Regarding giving your dogs some of the squash, I think that is a very healthy thing for them. I'm sure that wild dogs would eat the stomach contents of their kills, so I don't think of squash or other vegetable matter as foreign to their diets ( although be warned that onions, grapes, raisins, chocolate, especially dark, are all quite toxic for them. Please excuse me for repeating this from other posts, but I'm a dog lover..)

I once watched a segment on Animal Planet on the world's oldest cat. The guy said that he fed his cat canned fish to which he added veggies. I think commercial pet food is loaded with chemicals, so I am happy to try to supplement my pets' diets with anything organic to hopefully counter the bad stuff I can't avoid giving them.

Farmgal, your pineapple recipe sounds so great... and fun, to make "pineapple". As for myself, I'm already mourning the day when lemons, bananas, coffee, cinnamon, etc, etc, and so many other products are no longer available.

Thanks everyone for your input. Back to the chickens. I could use everyones advice. I need ways to cut down on storebought chicken food. What does everyone recomend to plant next year that can replace this mix.(can they eat dry beans if rough ground) It needs to be easily grown and harvested without the investment of harvesters for low cost prepping. Thanks

http://internationalpreppersnetwork.net/viewtopic.php?f=46&t=2467
i vaguely remember the video but i tried to retrieve it and came up empty but farmgal may be able to help you out with this.

Thanks to you all for all the gardening info. I look forward to getting one going at my new place on the northeastern shore this summer. Have enough land but have been trying to research what will grow well there. I NEED an herb garden. I will also do rhubarb and, eventually, asparagus I hope. And berries and perhaps a few fruit trees. But, vegetables - down south I am used to all I used to grow in Ontario not working here and it will take a while to 'remember' and 'experiment' with what will grow in NS on the shore, especially in a place where I am told the soil is decent but I know there is a lot of fog so not sure how much sun I will get. I have very much missed growing zucchini - too hot here, and pumpkin, all sorts of squash don't seem to do well here so I am excited to be growing those again up there. But, I will miss having rosemary last from season to season and just get bigger and bigger till it is almost like a tree - and, though it does get cold here and snows occasionally, I have one rosemary plant that has been blooming prolifically all winter this year. I am sure that won't happen in NS - but perhaps I can bring the rosemary inside and have it at least not die off.

And (winter) squash is great for dogs! It helps their digestive system when it goes wonky - in either direction - loose or the opposite. My dog LOVES butternut squash. Not so keen on pumpkin.