The Walden Effect: Farming, simple living, permaculture, and invention.

Gold rush squash bloom

Squash flowerI could see the first squash blossom from the window when I woke up --- a blaze of yellow-orange on the far side of the garden.  And back behind the bloom...could that be a developing ovary?

Despite my tendency toward heirlooms, we go the complete opposite direction with summer squash.  We plant a hybrid --- Gold Rush --- which is as prolific as a zucchini but has a taste we keep coming back to.

And, while most squashes spend a while making male flowers when they're young, Gold Rush seems to start out with all female flowers.  Which means we could be eating squash as early as next week!  I wish I could find an heirloom with this kind of track record, but for now we'll stick with the hybrid.



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About us: Anna Hess and Mark Hamilton spent over a decade living self-sufficiently in the mountains of Virginia before moving north to start over from scratch in the foothills of Ohio. They've experimented with permaculture, no-till gardening, trailersteading, home-based microbusinesses and much more, writing about their adventures in both blogs and books.



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