Recycling Squash Seed for Sowing in Springtime
Save Winter Squashes Pumpkins Seeds and Store for Growing Next Year
Oct 23, 2008
Carving Jack-O-Lantern and extreme Halloween styled pumpkins, and cooking winter squashes stuffed, roasted or blended in soups leaves behind a rich and fertile detritus.
The pulp of Cucurbita maxima, winter squashes and pumpkins, can be cleaned away easily from the seeds. Recycling squash and pumpkin seed for sowing in the spring takes a few minutes to start, a week preparation time and then it is done.
Recycling Seed From Winter Squashes and Pumpkins for Spring Sowing
Recycling seed from winter squashes and pumpkins is a way that cooks can make efficient use of every part of these precious crops. Kitchen gardener-cooks can recycle, save and store seeds until the frost has gone. Spring is the time for setting out to grow-your-own pumpkin and winter squashes for next year’s Halloween and winter recipes. Alternatively recycle seed from winter squashes and pumpkins as seed gifts to gardening family and friends.
Recycling seed from winter squashes and pumpkins can be done in five parts:
- The first part in recycling seed is to save all the pulp and seed when carving a pumpkin for a kids Halloween party, chopping a Kent pumpkin for making a spicy pumpkin soup or scooping out Butternut squash pulp ready for roasting with a nutty stuffing. Squash and pumpkin pulp and seeds, shown in the first photograph below, can be stored covered in a refrigerator, for up to three days, until time allows the next part to be done.
- Next wash the pulp away from the pumpkin or squash seeds with cold drinking water and using a fine sieve. Very soon the pulpy seeds as shown in the second photograph will clean up (photograph 3).
- The third part is to pat dry the seeds with a cloth and leave to dry in a warm light place. A window sill is ideal and a cupboard or near a heater may have too high a humidity for this part of the process. Absorbent material, such as a couple of sheets of kitchen towel made from recycled materials, underneath the squash seeds will be helpful (photograph 4).
- Leave the seeds drying for seven days and check that they are dry on both sides.
- Finally the seeds are ready for storing until they can be sowed in the springtime. Suitable wrappings for the recycled winter squash and pumpkin seeds include newspaper or magazines for recycling or bubble wrap, shown in the final photograph, which will offer frost protection.
Sowing and Planting Winter Squashes and Pumpkins in Spring
Gardening writer and broadcaster Carol Klein, who has run her nursery Glebe Cottage Plants in Devon England for over 25 years and won Six Gold Medals at the Chelsea Flower Show, writes about sowing and planting Cucurbita maxima, winter squashes and pumpkins, in Grow Your Own Veg (Mitchell Beazley, 2007): “Time your seed-sowing to give plants the maximum growing time outdoors. Since plants are frost-tender, you must sow seed indoors or in a frost-free greenhouse about one month before the last expected frost. Plant out when the risk of frost has passed”.
When sowing seed indoors, kitchen gardeners may wish to try sowing winter squashes and pumpkin seeds in an electric propagator. Alternatives to an electric propagator would be a simple seed tray or roottrainers.
When the frost risk has reduced, tender pumpkins and winter squashes sowed in the ground can be protected from any cold weather snaps by a fleecy covering or setting up a cloche. Fleecing and cloches will be available to buy from all good gardening catalogues, nurseries and garden centres.
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
