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Best-Tasting Winter Squash

Best-Tasting Winter Squash Featured Image

Fall time is winter squash time. Whether you plan to make squash soup, a pie, or pasta, some varieties taste better than others. Here are some of the very best to seek at the market and consider growing in the vegetable garden. Many are beautiful and all have outstanding flavor.

Winter Squash Types

Sunshine Kabocha Squash
Sunshine Kabocha Squash

Several of the varieties mentioned were bred outside of North America, but all winter squash originate from the New World. Species were first cultivated by Native Americans and developed over thousands of years. There are three primary culinary species known to cultivation—C. maxima, C. moschata, and C. pepo. True pumpkins and acorn squash are C. pepo, butternut squash are in C. moschata, and turban and kabocha squash are in C. maxima.

Across the board, the winter squash on this list rate at the top for flavor, according to countless formal and informal trials and reviews. Gardeners can be confident in choosing any one, if good taste is what they value in a squash. Most are also high performing in the garden.

Kabocha Squash

Kabocha (C. maxima) are squat, orange, green or gray-green squash that originates from Japan. They have dense, dry flesh that is bright orange. Two of the more common, and nicest tasting are ‘Red Kuri’ (92-100 days) with its orange-red skinned fruits and smooth flesh that is less sweet but nicely flavored, and the gray-skinned ‘Winter Sweet’ (95 days), which has dry, sweet flesh.

Acorn Squash

Acorn Squash
Cream of the Crop Acorn Squash

Acorn squash (C. pepo) are wonderfully sweet, deeply lobed, acorn-shaped, and great for roasting. The cream-, gold-, and dark-green-striped cultivar ‘Jester’ (95 days) is just as pretty as it is tasty. Another comparable variety with super sweetness is ‘Sweet Dumpling’ (90-100 days) with its smaller, squatter, ivory and green fruits, and honeyed orange flesh. A less sweet, but colorful, variety is the orange-, cream-, and dark-green-splashed ‘Festival’ (90-100 days). ‘Cream of the Crop’ is a pretty ivory colored variety with good, mild flavor.

Pumpkins

Baby Pam Pumpkin
Baby Pam Pumpkin

One of the finest pumpkins for pie is the tender-skinned C. pepo ‘Winter Luxury’ (105 days). Each year this variety, and the small, pie pumpkin ‘Baby Pam’ (105 days), are the pumpkins that I choose for making homemade pie. The ‘New England Pie’ pumpkin (105 days) is an old heirloom from the 1800s that is also highly recommended. The unusual, lumpy, blue-gray-skinned C. moschata ‘Marina di Chioggia’ (100 days) is an Italian heirloom turban squash with dense, sugary, orange flesh great for pies, soups, and desserts.

Butternut Squash

Butternut Squash
Butternut squash have some of the best flavor of all!

Butternut cultivars are pretty consistent when it comes to flavor. All have richly sweet, nutty flesh favored for all kinds of fall and winter cookery. The compact variety C. moschata ‘Butterbush’ (75 days) is short-vined and bears small butternut squash that are dark orange, dense and very sweet on the inside. Vines are quite productive and early to bear.

Other Winter Squash Types

Delicata Squash
Delicata Squash

The cream- and green-striped, elongated fruits of Cucurbita pepo ‘Delicata JS’ (100 days) are thin-walled and have sweet, nutty, golden flesh. The small, ornamental fruits of ‘Sweet Lightning’ (100 days) look like tiny pumpkins striped with cream. Its sweet, stringless, pale orange flesh is said to be even better tasting than that of ‘Delicata JS’.

Cultivating Winter Squash

Winter squashes need to be started in spring for fall harvest. Be sure to plant them outdoors after the threat of frost has passed. It pays to plant them on berms (click here to read all about berming) amended with lots of organic matter. Fafard Premium Natural & Organic Compost, and Fafard Garden Manure Blend are recommended for spring soil enrichment.
Full sun and space are essential for these sprawling, vining plants. Many may require as much as a 12’ to 15’ patch to grow to their fullest. You will know the fruits are ready to harvest when they are hard, have full color, and their supporting vines start to wither.

Winter Squash Pests and Diseases

There are several pests and diseases that cause squash vines real trouble. Powdery mildew is a common fungal disease that damages leaves and gives then a white, dusty appearance. (Click here to learn how to manage powdery mildew.) Squash vine borers bore into vines and cause them to quickly wilt and die. (Click here to learn how to manage squash vine borers.)

By fall, you should be able to find these squash at farmer’s markets and orchards. You might also consider planting one or two in your garden next year.

Cucurbita pepo 'Sweet Lightening'
Cucurbita pepo ‘Sweet Lightening’

Fantastic Fragrant Garden Flowers

Paeonia lactiflora 'Sarah Bernhardt'
Peony ‘Sarah Bernhardt’ is an old-fashioned pastel pink bloomer with a heady sweet fragrance. (Photo by Jessie Keith)

By the end of winter, gardeners long for the sweet scents of flowers.  Some of us take solace in cut flowers from the florist or supermarket while thumbing plant catalogs and indulging in flowery daydreams.  Convert those daydreams to reality by planning a few fragrant garden flowers to your beds, borders and containers.

Scents of Early Spring

'White Pearl' Hyacinth
The ultra-fragrant ‘White Pearl’ is an exceptional hyacinth for the spring garden. (Photo by Jessie Keith)

Daffodils (Narcissus spp.) are the essence of spring and some varieties are delectably fragrant.  ‘Campernelle’ is one of them, a multi-flowered yellow species narcissus that blooms early and gracefully.  Towards the end of the daffodil season, luxurious ‘Rose of May’, a double-flowered white bloomer, lives up to its name, exuding a sweet scent.

The legendary courtesan, Madame Pompadour, loved hyacinths (Hyacinthus orientalis) and nearly three centuries later, they still carry the fragrance banner into mid-spring, with stocky heads of highly scented florets in an array of Easter egg colors.  At about the same time, intensely fragrant lily-of-the-valley (Convallaria majalis) scent shaded places with their unique “Muguet des bois” aroma, long a favorite of perfume makers.  If you already grow lily-of-the-valley, dig up a budded clump, pot it up with some Fafard Natural and Organic Potting Soil and enjoy the fragrance indoors while the flowers last.  Afterward, return the clump to the garden.

Late Spring Fragrance

Deep purple blooms of sweet pea 'Cupani'
The deep purple blooms of sweet pea ‘Cupani’ offer spicy fragrance from late spring through summer. (Photo by Jessie Keith)

In pots or trained against walls or trellises, old-fashioned annual sweet peas (Lathyrus odoratus) send out a ravishing scent.  The maroon and purple Cupani types are among the most fragrant, but all varieties please the nose while tantalizing the eye with delicate orchid-like flowers.  Get a jump on the season by starting sweet pea seeds indoors in trays or cell packs filled with Fafard Natural and Organic Seed Starter.

By late spring, fragrant garden peonies (Paeonia lactiflora) command center stage, with tall stems, handsome dissected leaves, and big, bountiful flowers.  Older varieties, like the rose-pink double, ‘Sarah Bernhardt’, offer winning fragrance and make excellent cut flowers as well.  Well-tended peony plants will live for decades in the garden.

Summer Scent Extravaganza

Sweet scents abound in summer.  Biennial stocks (Matthiola incana) are sun lovers that grow one to three feet tall and bear colorful, dense clusters of spice-scented flowers.  Carnations (Dianthus caryophyllus) echo that clove fragrance, with familiar ruffled flowers in single and bi-colored combinations of reds, whites, yellows, pinks, and purples.  Both stocks and carnations can be grown from seed started indoors eight to 12 weeks before the last frost date, but are also available from nurseries in starter packs.
Standing tall at the back of the early summer border, nothing perfumes the air like Oriental lilies (Lilium spp.).  Hybridized from several different Asian lily species, Orientals grow three to four feet high and may require staking.  The effort is worth it to support the enormous scented trumpets that are borne in profusion on mature plants.  Freckled pink ‘Stargazer’ and pristine white ‘Casa Blanca’ are among the best-known Oriental lilies.

Evening Stars

Nicotiana 'Domino White' (DOMINO SERIES)
The Nicotiana alata hybrid ‘Domino White’ scents the air on summer nights.

Fragrant night-blooming plants open their petals in the evening hours to attract pollinators.  One of the best is flowering tobacco (Nicotiana alata), which bears long tubular flowers that flare into white or yellow-green trumpets.  Look for the fragrant species form, rather than unscented hybrids, and plant near seating areas or paths where evening visitors can enjoy them.

Fall Scents

Fragrance is harder to find as the growing season winds down, but plants that provide it are worth seeking out.  Perfume shady spots with cimicifuga, sometimes known as black cohosh or bugbane (Actaea racemosa).  Rising four to six feet tall, Cimicifuga bears elegant, deeply dissected foliage.  Sweet-smelling white flowerheads, each one bearing scores of tiny fragrant blooms, wave high above the leaves in the early fall.
Dahlias are great garden and cutting flowers, but are not known for fragrance.  It pays to plant the few that combine beauty and 'Honka' dahliascent.  ‘Honka’ is one.  Thriving in sunny spots, the single flowers sport eight narrow yellow petals apiece.  The combination of beauty, scent, and hardiness won ‘Honka’ the Royal Horticultural Society’s coveted Award of Garden Merit.

Location is Everything

Position fragrant flowering plants strategically throughout the garden and combine them with a selection of shrubs, trees and foliage plants that also exude distinctive scents.  Even weeding seems easier when the fragrance of flowers hangs in the air.

Many Dianthus are highly fragrant. (Photo by Jessie Keith)
Many Dianthus are highly fragrant. (Photo by Jessie Keith)