Long of Naples – An Italian Squash that produces prolifically





Myself with 122 pounds of Long of Naples


Though my Tromboncino butternut squash did well in the Tucson heat, I had seed bugs kill some of the fruit by sucking sap out. This began my search for a squash variety that could outgrow the critters and produce more food per fruit. I settled on the largest Moschata variety I could find, Long of Naples. I procured this fine Italian variety from Baker Creek Heirloom Seeds.



My daughter with a 25 pound squash

My Long of Naples plants began very vigorously but were very slow to start fruiting and took up to 80 days before having the first female flowers blossom. As with many fruiting plants, if you have a large plant that sets its first fruits, each fruit can grow rapidly – even up to a pound per day. Long of Naples squash averages 25 pounds per fruit. At that point they begin to harden up into a winter (long-term storage) squash. Before that, you can pick the larger fruits when they are between 10-15 pounds as a summer (zucchini type) squash. I gave a 15 pound Long of Naples summer squash to a friend, who took over an hour to just cut the thing up.





Nearly 400 #s with a pencil for perspective

All considered, my two long of Naples Squash plants produced almost 500 pounds last fall – a real feat given the limited space of my garden. For a few days I had almost 400 pounds curing in my house at once. My largest squash was 43 pounds. My wife told me to take it to the county fair. I would have but they do not accept produce entries in the Home Arts division. Too bad.



A delicious summer squash

It is safe to say that Tromboncino can produce way too much food – even for my family of 6 – so I was forced to sell some of my monsters to those who would like a vegetarian feast. So how many ways can you eat squash? Plenty. We've had squash in lasagna as the noodles, in cornbread with a white sauce, in spaghetti, in various casseroles, and in lots and lots of pies. The flesh begins white when young but develops a dark orange flesh as it matures. The flesh is sweet though the texture is not as smooth and buttery as some when fully mature.





My waning squash plant soon before the first freeze

 

At the Jessie Owens Farmer’s Market

Selling cucumbers and beans at the Farmer's Market

Occasionally, when my garden produces too many vegetables I sell my organically grown produce at the Jessie Owens Farmer’s market. Even though this market is pretty slow in comparison to others in Tucson, the individuals who run the market are both helpful and friendly. The first time I sold there was in the fall of 2010. Our first experience at the market left my daughter and I selling out all of our excess cucumbers before the market even began. In sharp contrast, this last year I stood outside for many hours to sell off just one of my 25 pound squash. The only was I was able to sell it was by taking 1 ½ hours to cut it up the night before. Sadly, I was forced to lug the remainder of my unappreciated squash home with me. I wonder if I sold less because of less demand for my crop or because I didn't have my children with me.





On Inbreeding Depression



This Acorn Squash is a good example of an outbreeder

In order to remain self-sufficient, many gardeners choose to save seed from their favorite fruit and vegetable varieties. When seeking to save seed properly, it is important to know what you are doing. A seed saver needs to know how to grow a plant, how the plant pollinates, how to save seed, and other factors that may affect future seed viability including plant selection, variety isolation and inbreeding depression.

I began researching inbreeding depression in order to help me better determine how to plant my garden in the future. I recently read about it in The Heirloom Life Gardener by Baker Creek seeds and in The Resilient Gardener by Carol Deppe. Inbreeding depression occurs when plants have too small of a population of fellow breeders during pollination. It causes future generations of plants to be weak as demonstrated by slow growth, poor vigor and disease resistance, along with poor fruit production. Some varieties of plants such as tomatoes, which can self-pollinate, have a much smaller problem with inbreeding depression than plants such as corn, that require a population of at least 200 plants to keep from inbreeding depression.

In The Resilient Gardener, Carol Deppe says the following about inbreeding depression for corn: “Corn is very subject to inbreeding depression. Here’s an illustration: Suppose you grow up a hundred plants and save grain each year from the plant that yields best. What kind of yield will you have in five years? Answer: Your corn variety will be so weak, wimpy, and low-yielding that you will be lucky to be able to keep it going at all. Its yield will stink compared to what you have started with, even though you selected for the highest yield each year.” pg. 282

Carol Deppe goes on to explain some standards to live by to keep from inbreeding: “The standard seed-saving rule of thumb is to save seeds from 20 plants if the species is an inbreeder and from 100 or more plants if it is an outbreeder”. Pg. 304

So what is an inbreeder? An inbreeder is a kind of plant that can pollinate its own flower if needed. Each flower contains all parts needed for pollination and fruiting. Tomatoes, peppers, eggplant, peas, and beans are good examples of inbreeders. Though cross-pollination may not happen too often, it is important to grow a large enough population on inbreeders that if a detrimental trait arises you can select out the bad plants and keep only the best plants out of the population.

An outbreeder is a plant that has separate pollen-producing and pollen-receiving structures within the plant. Outbreeders include the cucurbit family, many grains, melons, and most other garden plants.

Each vegetable variety has various tolerance to inbreeding depression but it is good to follow the 20/100 rule to keep from having long-run problems with your seed. That is with exception of the maize family, which requires 200 plants to keep from exhibiting inbreeding depression.

Having to select the best plants from each population and having to make sure there is a large enough population to keep from inbreeding depression can be reason to cause depression among many home gardeners. So what can a gardener do to make sure that inbreeding depression does not happen? A gardener could make sure that he grows enough of a crop each year, or he could save seed from multiple years while using different seed each year, or he could grow the same variety with other gardeners and swap seeds to keep genetic diversity high. The last option assumes that both gardeners are selecting seed for attributes that both have determined are the most important. Another helpful practice for gardeners saving seed would be to mark what year or batch the seed was grown in and note how many plants were in the population that produced the seed.

Some other websites that are really helpful in understanding inbreeding depression include Seed Saver's Exchange Seed Saving Chart. For seed saving, gardeners should at least grow enough plants to maintain a variety. There is also a website that tells about those crops that are most tolerant and sensitive to inbreeding depression.

My current winning tomato variety - Siletz



Siletz tomatoes that lack pollination also lack seeds

This year all the tomato plants in my temporary greenhouse are from the variety Siletz. I usually diversify in the varieties I plant but I was so impressed with the performance of this cultivar last season that I only planted seeds of this variety. I'm still planning on starting a couple other varieties soon. Siletz was the only variety that could even compare to Celebrity in production.  And since the taste of the tomato fruit is the least of concerns for Tucson’s tomato gardeners I am willing to have food production be pretty high on my priority list. Don’t get me wrong – a tomato’s taste is important but without shadecloth most tomatoes are lucky to produce a few fruit in Arizona’s summer heat. Many varieties that are advertized as producing an abundant crop of large tomatoes just barely present 1 or 2 cherry-sized tomatoes per plant. When planting anything in my garden I first prioritize what I want. The three things that matter most to me are that the plant is open-pollinated, that it can grow in my climate, and that it produces lots of food. Growing in my climate requires that the plant exhibit vigor, disease resistance, heat resistance, and large fluctuations in temperature.

Although some may scoff at the taste of a Celebrity Hybrid tomato, none will laugh when you compare a tomato plant with 25-50 large fruit on the vine with what many heirloom plants produce in my climate - almost nothing. For this reason some gardeners who try Celebrity may choose not to go back to heirloom tomatoes. This is also the reason that some gardeners who do not grow hybrids make an exception for Celebrity. So why have I been growing a hybrid tomato in my heirloom garden? Because I use Celebrity as a standard to compare my other tomatoes to rather than as a long term solution to my food production needs. It is unfortunate that, within my garden, Slietz has been the only other cultivar that has even compared to Celebrity in fruit production. Both varieties possess a semi-determinate growth habit. Siletz's parthenocarpic nature also allows it to pump out fruit in the middle of the summer when most other varieties begin waning. This last year I planted most of my tomato varieties in a trench (lowered bed gardening) in the middle of my yard and provided west side shade from a bean trellis. The lowered bed method is also used by the Community Gardens of Tucson and is very useful for southwestern gardening. My seed source for this Siletz was Territorial Seed Company.



End of Season Roots of Siletz, Celebrity, and Ozark Pink Tomatoes.

Last crop of the season ready for paper bags. No other varieties compared.

Tomato Growth Patterns

It seems that some of the best tomato varieties I have trialed here in Tucson are those that continue to grow new branches despite having a shorter growth pattern. These tomatoes are often called semi-determinate because they exhibit the growth pattern of an indeterminate without having the size of one.



The wild tomato variety, L. hirsutum exhibits growth size based on pot size.

Determinate tomatoes usually grow short bush-type plants and have a crop that ripens all at once. This is very helpful with a farmer who harvests all his nearly ripe green tomatoes with a tractor. Meanwhile, indeterminate tomatoes are characterized by tall growing tomato plants that can often grow as tall as a small tree and often require support to keep them from rambling. Determinates tend to do very well in pots while indeterminates tend reach their full potential when grown in the ground. Gardenweb has a good explanation of both determinate and indeterminate tomato plants while Sandy’s Garden has a good explanation of what a semi-determinate tomato plant is You can use the tomato's growth habit to your advantage if you factor it into the positioning of the plants in your garden.