Squash crop

[Melon boy]

Planted Sunshine hybrid squash, three plants yielded me 40 beautiful squash. Thought I would share my picture with you viewers. Now what do I do with these squash, any of you folks have ideas ?

[applestar]

Looks great! Had to look it up since I mostly try to grow OP and not hybrid. But this sounds like a good eating variety, and as it is a hybrid, you would use the seeds for eating yourself or for animal/wildlife feed rather than saving to grow.

Note I boldfaced Johnny's description where it says Sunshine only keeps max. 3 months. So it sounds like you will want to process them before then.

[Sunshine (F1) Squash Seed - Johnny's Selected Seeds
https://www.johnnyseeds.com/p-6341-sunshine.aspx


HARVEST:
Fruits are typically ready about 50-55 days after fruit set, and should be harvested before any hard frosts. Cut fruits from vines and handle carefully. Sun cure by exposing fruits for 5-7 days or cure indoors by keeping squash at 80-85°F/27-29°C with good air ventilation.
STORAGE:
Store at 50-60°F/10-15°C, 50-70% relative humidity and good ventilation. Repeated exposure to temperatures below 50°F/10°C may cause chilling damage. Kabochas get sweeter with a few weeks of storage. Green varieties will keep up to 4–5 months in storage; Winter Sweet will keep up to 6 months. Sunshine is the exception and is delicious right out of the field, but will only last a maximum of 3 months.

[Taiji]

That's a great crop from only 3 plants!

When I have excess squash that I can't get to fast enough, I peel them, remove seeds, cut them in chunks and cook them in a pot. Then, I puree them with a mixer, put them in freezer bags and freeze for pies, or just as a side dish thru the winter. (hope you have a big freezer)

Some squash are easy to pre peel with a potato peeler, but if too difficult to do that I just cook them with skins on, then strain them thru a ricer. I give lots of squash away too.

[kayjay]

You could give them to friends and family as mini pumpkins for Halloween.

I would also do as Taiji suggested. I love pumpkin/squash soup. Lots of different styles. My favorites are pumpkin sausage soup, and curried pumpkin soup.

As a side dish, I love pureed squash with cream cheese and salt and fresh ground pepper. Yum.

I would also save the seeds and toast them - or if you have a dehydrator, I prefer the seeds done that way. No burnt taste - yuck.

[digitS']

Pumpkin pie is much better using winter squash! The recipes are simple enough for a grade school kid (from my own experience ).

The pies freeze well.

Yes, soup! I don't care for summer squash but check out some recipes and substitute winter squash (or pumpkin). I make a "zucchini" soup ... yum.

Steve

[jal_ut]

For sure any of the winter Squash make a better pumpkin pie than Pumpkin.

I like winter squash just cut into about 4 inch pieces and put on a pan and baked till tender. Serve with butter, salt and pepper.

[rainbowgardener]

I just made a wonderful curried winter squash soup last night with some of the acorn and butternut squash from my garden -- made a big pot of it and took the rest to potluck lunch at Quaker Meeting today, where it all disappeared!

My garden squashes are more tender (easier to cut and scoop seeds out of) and sweeter than the grocery store ones.

[imafan26]

Wow, I can't get over the fact that you got 40 pumpkins from 3 vines. I can get that many fruit to set but usually only three per vine make it to maturity. Good job!