Cucurbita moschata “Butternut”
Butternut squash, butternut, buttercup squash: its English name says exactly what it is—“butter nut.” Its bright orange, dense, fiber-free flesh, with its tiny seed cavity concentrated in the bulbous end, makes it the easiest squash to cook: little waste, lots of flesh.
Characteristics:
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Dense, fiber-free flesh: bright orange, firm, with a subtly sweet, musky flavor.
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Good storage squash: it keeps through the winter without difficulty in a well-ventilated room at around 15°C.
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Few seeds: concentrated in the bottom of the fruit; the rest is all flesh.
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Adaptable: it grows well in both northern and southern France.
Precautions:
- As with all cucurbits, a fruit with a very bitter taste may contain cucurbitacins, which irritate the digestive system. Always taste a small piece: if the bitterness is pronounced, discard the entire fruit.
Sowing advice:
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Exposure: full sun, to capture as much heat as possible.
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Soil: very rich, deep, and well drained. This is an extremely hungry plant: generously add compost across the entire bed, not just in the planting hole. It does not tolerate standing water around the crown.
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Method: sow in pots under cover at 20–25°C from April onward, or sow directly in place after the last frosts, 2–3 cm deep, with the seed placed on its edge. See how to sow your seeds.
Planting advice:
- Transplant after the frosts, spacing plants at least 1 meter apart: this is a vigorous trailing plant that can also be trained on a sturdy structure to save space.
Care advice:
- Water generously at the base, without wetting the foliage. Apply a thick mulch.
- In cool climates, limit each plant to 3 or 4 fruits and pinch out the stem tips after the last fruit: you will get truly ripe squashes rather than a series of undeveloped ones.
Harvesting advice:
- Harvest before the frosts, when the stem is dry and corky and the skin can no longer be scratched with a fingernail. Always leave 5 cm of stem: a squash cut flush with the fruit rots quickly.
- Let them dry in the sun for about ten days before storing. Their flavor improves after one or two months in storage.
Beneficial combinations:
Benefits for biodiversity:
- Its large yellow flowers offer abundant pollen and nectar to bees and bumblebees early in the morning.
- Its immense trailing foliage covers the soil all summer, suppresses weeds, and protects the ground from drying out—a valuable crop for living soil.
Uses:
- In soup, roasted in wedges, mashed, baked in a gratin, made into a sweet tart, or used in risotto. Its thin skin becomes tender when cooked, so there is no need to peel it when roasting. The seeds can be roasted.
Harvesting your own seeds:
Take seeds from a fully ripe fruit, rinse them, and dry them flat for several days. Good news: Cucurbita moschata does not cross with zucchini (C. pepo) or pumpkins (C. maxima)—only with other Cucurbita moschata. See how to save your seeds.
Our Commitment to Quality: at SemiSauvage - Permaculture, we grow and select our seeds with respect for all living things as our guiding principle. Based near the Auvergne Volcanoes, we choose open-pollinated, non-hybrid varieties, tested for their germination rate, carefully sorted and packaged, with no chemical treatment. Our belief: to give gardeners back the ability to resow, year after year, seeds that truly belong to them.
The most practical squash in the vegetable garden—and one that keeps all winter.
