There's a gardener who lives about 1.5 miles from me. I've often bought squash from him. 2 years ago, I bought the biggest butter cup squash he had. It was massive. I saved the seeds and planted them last year. They were planted in a single hill along with seeds from my usual variety. In that one hill which was about 4' x 3' I harvested 185# of squash. I weighed them, and couldn't believe that yield. I still have quite a few seeds left for next year. Interestingly, last year, he had the usual variety of small butter cup. I save seeds every year. Cucurbits are the easiest. I've never done any deliberate crossing, and try to grow only one variety of an OP if I plan to save seeds. But I'm not too proud to try saving seeds from hybrids.
Hennible: My "LG" name refers to my preferred gardening method: I keep my garden under layers of mulch. I don't till, unless opening up new ground. I often sheet or trench compost. Why cart the stuff off your garden to a compost pile, tend it in a compost pile, only to cart it back to the garden when it's finished. I often let seeds from this year's crop fall to the ground for next year's crop. If my lettuce goes to seed, but I want to have lettuce someplace different next year, I just yank the plants out of the ground and lay them where next year's crop will be. Garlic? I only harvest what I need, leaving the rest in the ground as a perennial crop. Garlic scapes go to seed and produce an abundance of heads for future use. My garden is a wild hodge podge of produce mixed in with the weeds that manage to make their way through the mulch. I don't view weeds as a horrible thing, unless they are crowding out a vegetable plant. (free cover crops... or green manure) I've purposefully left a lot in the garden this year, so when the girls get turned loose in the garden after first frost, they'll have a bonanza of seeds. If potatoes manage to evade harvest in the fall, they'll sprout in the spring. Sometimes, i move them to where I intend the next crop to be, other times, I just throw some mulch over them, and step over them throughout the growing season. My best crop of potatoes was one I never planted. I had volunteers sprout in my corn patch. They were absolutely huge, producing better than the potatoes I planted that year.
LG, you just might be my hero!
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