An ode to Florida squash

“Florida without agriculture! Without tomatoes, beans, peppers, eggplant, peas, squash; without its golden-headed glory of citrus!” – Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings, Cross Creek

We take squash for granted. The humble vegetable – alongside corn, beans, and pumpkins – was one of the first crops cultivated in Florida. The cucurbit family, of which squash is a member, is one of Florida’s oldest residents.

The Apalachee farmed squash intensively, as did indigenous Florida communities. The Timucua, who lived in what we know now as Duval County, found the soil along the west bank of the Saint Johns River agreeable for their agricultural pursuits.

“Although the Timucua were not intensive farmers like the Apalachee, archaeological records show they started cultivating maize around 750 A.D. in the Saint Johns River region,” Joy Sheffield Harris writes in A Culinary History of Florida: Prickly Pears, Datil Peppers & Key Limes. “Crops of corn, beans, squash, and pumpkins were usually planted in fields near villages, but the type of soil had something to do with the placement of gardens. For instance, since the soil east of the Saint Johns River was sandy, the gardens were smaller than those on the west side, where excellent crops grew due to the rich soil there.”

When we look at the natural world as we know it, it is easy to see how much Florida’s indigenous people still speak to us and teach us. The word “squash” is an indigenous word, as are “raccoon,” “succotash,” and “pecan.” Squash is still found for sale nearly year-round at the Riverside Arts Market and Jacksonville Farmers Market.

Indigenous people first used slash-and-burn, clear-cutting techniques like European agriculture, but over time, they developed a much more sophisticated agricultural system that connected plants instead of isolating them. Perhaps the most famous of these techniques is North America’s “Three Sisters,” or, corn, beans and squash grown alongside each other. This method is known as “intercropping,” and avid gardeners find it endlessly fascinating.

That’s because this interconnected system is nothing short of genius. The beans climb the corn stalks, and the squash fertilizes the soil and provides weed cover. Just be sure to plant them in the right order – corn first, then beans, then squash.

Writer Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings recognized the greatness of squash and bragged in her memoir Cross Creek of the unique varieties found near her beloved Alachua County farm.

“We raise here successfully an ethereal relation of the squash family, the choyote. The fruitlike vegetable grows on a luxurious vine that has been known to cover an acre. I used it through a hot summer for shade over my Mallard duck pen. The choyote is the shape of a blunt, enormous pear, pale jade-green in color. Peeled, sliced, parboiled, and tapered off au gratin in the oven with a dense cream sauce and a nicely calculated quantity of grated cheese, it provides so delicate a dish that I should consider it suitable only for Boston Brahmins, if it were not that Boston Brahmins have a rank and plebeian taste for baked beans, coarse brown bread, and odorous fish cakes.”

You can plant squash several times a year, and it comes in varieties galore, including winter squash, summer squash, zucchini, yellow, crookneck and pattypan. You can plant both winter and summer squash in North Florida between February and April, and again in August and September. They are generally low maintenance plants, but you may run into some powdery mildew that you can spray with an organic treatment like Neem oil.

That’s one of the great things about squash – it knows the neighborhood. Within 40-60 days you’ll have edible fruit growing in your Florida yard, provided you put it in deeply tilled soil and keep the soil pH around 5.8 to 6.8. Five to six plants are enough to fill your family up with squash. To harvest, cut the stem a few inches above your produce.

Take a moment to appreciate the long, hearty history of squash next time you see it on a local menu or in the grocery store – it’s one of our oldest residents. Sports teams come and go. Leaders fall. Squash is forever.

Photos from Florida Memory