The more I studied Pumpkin and Squash and the role in Indian and Colonial food production, the more I realized how we underutilize them now and how well they should fit into our SHTF food production.
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The Role of Pumpkins and Squash in the Subsistence Garden
Pumpkin was important food source, crucial to the Indians and early settler’s survival through the hungry winter months an important staple for thousands of years. 5ooo years ago before cultivation by the Indian peoples, wild pumpkins flesh was too bitter to be palatable and only the seeds where eaten. By 1630s, Pilgrims considered pumpkin and parsnips the mainstay of their winter diet where the palatable pumpkin flesh was baked, roasted, boiled, or added to soups and stews. In fact, every part of the plant is eatable; seeds, flesh, flowers, and even the leaves. In colonial times, fields of pumpkins where grown for winter animal fodder, as well as human consumption, for fattening pigs and as a winter supplemental feed for chickens, goats, horses, cattle, and sheep.
Growing Pumpkins and Squash in a Subsistence Garden
Native Americans cultivated pumpkins and squash extensively, often planted with corn and pole beans in what was called the three sisters technique. This takes advantage of the symbiotic relationship between the 3 species to improved yields of all. The corn is planted circularly around a hill or mound (usually with enhanced fertility). The tall corn supports the pole bean vines while the beans bind the stocks against the wind as well as provide nitrogen to the soil. The pumpkins cover the ground shading which discourages the weeds and help hold in soil moisture for the shallower rooted corn.
Squash and pumpkin have growth characteristics that lend themselves to newly broken ground and subsistence gardening. The New England Pie pumpkin, that we grow, have vines grow to about 16 feet long and 12 inches high allowing them to grow over or on the weeds. Their taproot may grow to 6 feet deep with 10 or more lateral branches that are extensively branched outward for 5 to 10 feet with lateral roots 2 to 4 feet long that are further branched. This forms a very efficient root complex such that the top soil 2 feet or more are filled with feeding roots.
This growth characteristic lends itself to utilizing a raw, roughly cleared field (or a still sodded back yard). Unlike most garden or field crops, pumpkins and squash only need a spot of clear, fertile soil to grow. Once you clear out or simply kill the trees and brush, you can simply dig a 2 or 3 foot hole, fill it up to within 6 inches of the top with humanure compost or even raw excrement, and back fill soil. Then plant several pumpkins or squash in a circle 6 inches from and around the spot. Pumpkins do not need the tree and brush roots removed from the field, the stumps pulled or even the killed trees cut down. They will grow over the weeds and up any re-sprouting brush. Pumpkin and squash with their deep root system will grow in the soil near the hot, raw manure absorbing the nutrients that filter through the soil. The roots will eventually grow in to the underground compost when it is no longer “hot” enough to burn them. Normally huminure is not considered safe to incorporate into the garden until it has anaerobically composted by fungi for two years for above ground crops and three years for root crops. These solves two problems for you in allowing you to productively dispose of humanure and grow eatables the first year on roughly cleared land.
Using the Biointensive methods, pumpkins and squash can produce a yield of 48 to as much as 350 Lb per 100 sq ft of space. This varies greatly with the particular species and cultivar that you grow and the fertility of the soil. Expect yields on the lower side from your marginally productive plots.
Types of Pumpkins and Squash
Depending upon the variety, pumpkins, which are actually a form of winter squash, have different culinary uses. Sweet and refined varieties are best for pies, while dry and dense varieties are well suited for soups and stews. For toasted pumpkin seeds, some varieties have hull-less or semi-hull-less seeds.
There are four main species which seldom, if ever, cross with each other so you can grow each type in the year and still save true to type seed for replanting.
• Pepo- include summer squash, many baking pumpkins like Acorn, Spaghetti squash, and the New England Pie and Kakai (“naked” seed) pumpkins that we grow.
• Maxima- generally get large and keep very well in storage. They include Buttercup, Hubbard, and the Hopi Pale Gray and Lakota that we grow.
• Moschata- excellent keepers with usually orange, sweet and refined flesh like Long Island Cheese and, our favorite, butternut.
• Mixta- varieties like Cushaw are typically pale yellow or cream-colored fleshed and not quite as sweet or refined some other types. They are often baked with brown sugar or maple syrup added.
Using Pumpkins and Squash
Americans have largely forgotten how to really eat pumpkins and squash except for the occasional pumpkin pie and baked squash dish and maybe pumpkin breads, muffins, cake and the very occasionally, pumpkin soups. However in colonial times, pumpkins where used to make much else including custards, sauces, vinegar, and pies (originally as a substitute for the outlawed [in some colonies] “minced pies”. Also it was made into wine and beers that were considered quite a good drinks.
The American Indians roasting them for eating as is dried them to add to soups and stews, and mixed them with corn meal to making porridges and puddings. Among the colonists, the most common way to prepare pumpkins was to stew and cook fresh ones down in to something like a pumpkin butter which was mixed with butter and a little vinegar. Another variation was to cut the top off of a pumpkin, scooped the seeds out, and filled the cavity with cream, eggs, honey, mace, nutmeg, and ginger placed the top back on and carefully buried it in the hot ashes of a cooking fire and bake using the shell in place of a crust. They were also added as a dry vegetable to soup or stew. The breaded blossoms fried as fritters, the seeds were roasted for a tasty, nutritional snack, even the leaves were stewed as pottage. A very good utility vegetable.
Colonial Americans had a real talent for make alcoholic beverages out of almost anything and, when barley for malt was scarce; they make and drank pumpkin beer and ale. The Pilgrim recipe involved a mixture of persimmons, hops, maple syrup, as well as, pumpkin. In Virginia an alcoholic beverage was fermented from pumpkins too. The pumpkins where mashed in a trough like apples then pressed. The juice was then boiled in a copper caldron for considerable time, carefully skimmed, hopped, and fermented like a malt beer. A similar process produced Pumpkin Wine using ground pumpkin, raisins (or other dried fruit), spices (cinnamon, nutmeg & ginger) and honey.
We have grown Kakai Pumpkin especially for their pumpkin “naked” seeds which we roast for snacks and for use in baking like nuts. The seeds contain sizable amounts of protein (35%) and approximately 50% unsaturated fatty oil (mainly linoleic and oleic acids). Kakai is a variety of the Austrian type Pumpkin that is pressed for its delicious tasting, health full oil which I also take for benign prostate enlargement (BPH) control. My home expeller type oil press has an 86% extraction efficiency with these seeds. All oil seed pumpkins that I am familiar with have a flesh that is bland and not particularly tasty but it is useable, similar to summer squash, as filler in soups and stews or as an animal food.
Processing Pumpkins and Squash
Most often today, the pumpkin rind is removed, the flesh cut into pieces and boiled, steamed, or oven baked until the flesh is very tender. The cooked flesh is eaten directly or pureed until smooth and used or frozen. An alternatively for longer range storage that we use is to de-rind then cut pumpkins and squash into squares, dehydrate until very dry and ground into a flour for storage. One of our 15 pound Lakota, dehydrated and ground into pumpkin flour, fit into a little over a single 1 quart jar (a considerable space savings). One quart of pumpkin flour added to four quarts of water will make four and a half quarts of pumpkin puree and it can be used directly for making pumpkin bread by substituting 1/4 of the recipes regular flour with pumpkin flour.
Preserving Pumpkins & Squash
Today the most common storage method is root cellar storage after curing at warm temperatures for about a week. The root cellar should be cool and dry (50 to 55o F at 60 to 75 % relative humidity) and many pumpkins and squash will last into March and April the following spring.
The Indians preserved the pumpkins and squash differently. After removing the seeds, they cut the pumpkin into strips, twisted them together and dried them in the sun or above the fire near the smoke hole of their tepee or shelter, making a sort of smoked jerky of them. Dried and smoked, they can keep for years and when boiled, often with meat jerky, on journeys and reputedly the taste was reported to quite palatable. The dried outer shells of some types of pumpkins and squashes were used as water vessels, bowls, and storage containers.
We used to cook the fresh pumpkin or squash, puree, and then freeze it. But we have found that a better alternative is to simply to de-rind and cut raw flesh into thin wafer squares, then dehydrated and store or (better) ground into pumpkin flour and store. {See Processing}
Nutrition Facts
Pumpkins and squash are very good for you nutritionally. Their yellow ot orange flesh is very high in beta-carotene that the body converts into Vitamin A and high in lutein and zeaxanthin, which scavenge free radicals in the lens of the eye and help prevent the formation of cataracts and reduce the risk of macular degeneration also minerals like iron, potassium and zinc. The seeds are high in protein, healthful omega 3 fatty acids, iron, and the B vitamins.
Medical Uses
Pumpkin seeds contain protective compounds, phytosterols, beneficial in shrinking prostate cancer by helping prevent the conversion of testosterone into dihydrotestosterones (DHT). DHT is one of the causative agents for the enlargement of the prostate and prostate cancer. Pumpkin seed oil is used for treating kidneys; countering substances that trigger production of kidney stones, in used for treating urinary problems and gastritis and are helpful in expelling roundworms and tapeworms. Also, pumpkin seed oil is said to enhance production of breast milk in nursing mothers. For diabetes, recent research has found a linked pumpkin extract and insulin production. An ethanol extract of pumpkin leaf, D-chiro-inositol a molecule that mediates insulin activity, appears to rejuvenate the pancreas and help small deficiency of insulin.
Pumpkins and Squash in the Subsistence Garden
The roll of pumpkins and squash in the subsistence garden is two fold, besides being utilized raw, rough cleared fields, without the tree roots and sod being removed, even using unfinished humanure compost, they fit into the land usage plan of 10% vegetables, 30% for high calorie roots, and 70% for grains. Where the vegetables provide essential vitamins and minerals, the starchy roots provide needed calories and minerals, and the grains give storable starch calories and (incomplete) protein. The Native Americans three sisters technique, cultivating their pumpkins or squash with corn and beans, not only to take advantage of their symbiotic relationship, but because they compliment each. The corn and beans proteins compliment each other for a more complaint protein as well as calories. The pumpkins supply vitamins as do the leaves while the seeds have essential fats and minerals. As we have seen, all these can all be dried for winter use when other foods are in short supply. To this, the pilgrims added parsnips, peas and some barley and wheat as well as some European vegetables. This is not a bad model to use as a start if your bug out location ends up as just a clearing in the woods.
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