Re: 1009 pumpkin or Squash??
Hello everyone
Quite the fun little discusion going on, I just wanted to add some of my
input since I am back from college and have officially given up sleeping
so I can spend more time working on the squash and pumpkin and anything
else that grows big project.
I added some pictures to my web site of the 947 Welty which was judged a
squash by our local growers. You can see the pictures at
http://web.raex.com/~ldnwelty/pumpkin/pumppic.htm
Or just go to my home page and click on the link pumpkin pictures.
The 947 was a very tough call for the judges, and they didn't decide
untill after it was weighed that it was going to be a squash. It looks
quite pink in person, and my mom calls it Pinky (assuming I am the Brain
and together we will take over the world). Now should this fruit have
been a squash or a pumpkin? I decided to look at it using the Pacific
Northwest method of determining. I made my grid, and placed it on the
locations first just eyeballing it, and then judging each square
intuitivly as to if it was a squash or pumpkin colored square. This time
I determined it was 71% pumpkin color. Then I went and measured out to
make sure I took the readings in the correct place, this time it gave 79%
pumpkin reading. I tried two more teste, one in whish I clasified any
square with more than a couple speckles of pink as pumpkin color, this
gave a 93% reading. I repeated this with the notion that any square with
more than a speckle of gray/green would go as squash, thie resulted in a
70% pumpkin reading.
After taking these readings, it can be seen why the judging of pumpkin or
sqush is rather dificult. I beleive this method developed by the
Northwest growers is a good one to use. When it is difficult to tell, it
is best to have a concrete method established for determination, and this
will make the judging process procede much easier.
As far as my opinion goes, I think we need to find a corporate sponser
that will put up squash prize money. Then we can start to establish some
squash interest since it seems that money is an important factor to many
people, and now we only have a few squash purist growers competing
currently. Maybe free seeds would help encourage squash growers as well,
so I have lots of sqush seeds free for the taking for anyone who wants,
and will arrange the safe trip for the seeds from my place to yours in a
padded mailer.
Good luck to all squash growers, and pumpkin growers, and watermellon, and
radish, and carrot, and marrow, and everything else.
Nic Welty
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