the squash I will share with you today defies the laws of nature and it might be the only squash you ever need to grow when most people think squash they think either summer squash like zucchini the costado Romanesco being one of my alltime favorites or Patty pan squash the gelbert englisher custard squash is a great one and so is the white scalp squash an old super productive Native American variety on the other hand when people think squash they might think winter squash like the walam butternut squash which is delicious and has good resistance to vine
bores maybe they think butter cup squash the bon bon being one of my alltime favorites perhaps pumpkins is what pops into your head when you're thinking winter squash but the squash that I'm going to share with you is something completely different it goes against the common winter squash summer squash norm and it allows you to decide what you want it to be I plant this squash like any other squash in Spring I fill my seed cells with potting mix and I plant my seeds then water them in after about a week the seeds should Sprout
I suggest you use large seed cells I use these bego ones because squash grows quick and you don't want them to get root bound a couple of weeks after your last expected Frost dat is a good time to get your seedlings transplanted out ideally you want your plants to have two true leaves grab some allpurpose fertilizer and sprinkle it on the surface of your soil then mix it in squash are heavy feeders adding this fertilizer will allow them to explode into growth then pop your seedlings out of the cell you can see this plant isn't
root bound at all and it's at the perfect stage to transplant out I also like to inoculate my plants with Michael risal fungi when planting I pop my plant in and lightly press down the soil around it then water it in this will make sure that there's no big air gaps in the soil after about a week the plant grew significantly you could see it at the end of the raised bed there next what I do is something you may have never seen before I spray my plants with surround kin clay I don't have footage
of spraying this exact plant but I will show you on a few other squash that I grew this year what this clay does is it creates a layer of protection for your plant it discourages pests from going after your plant like the Cucumber beetle and I also spray the base of the stem to discourage squash Vine boes from attacking my plants the clay doesn't impede any growth you can see just a few days later how much the plant has already grown and here is the original squash I showed you just a few days after spraying
with the clay it's only been 10 days since I transplanted it out for the next few weeks I just let the squash grow and do its thing and stayed on top of watering so it had an adequate level of moisture and could grow really well notice down here we got the little boss with us and we made sure we grabbed him a fresh cucumber that we still got growing yeah this guy needs to get paid for all the hard work he does out here his favorite form of payment is to just snack on some of
these cucumbers right boy go to town on it we'll let this guy snack on the Cucumber make sure you spam some hearts down low if you love seeing the little boss in the videos then as I see my plants start to flower I like to go by and give them a boost I put some of my homemade soil in a bucket and grab some fertilizer then I mix some fertilizer into the soil after that I take the soil and place it around the base of my squash plants this will give the squash the nutrition it
needs as it starts heading into production shortly after that the plants will start to kick out more squash than you know what to do with and now that the fruit is ready it's time to reveal this squash that can be eaten and used as either a summer squash squash or a winter squash it lets you decide as you can see this squash really likes to sprawl along the ground and grows prolifically look at it moving its way through my garden it has some massive leaves too look at the size of these things and they provide
really nice cover for a young dog trying to hide from the Sun or even just finding a space to hide out right Boo one of the common names is the climbing zucchini look at it climbing over my apple tree over there so vigorous it's also known as the tromino squash maybe because it's shaped like a trombone look at this and this one over here if you know it for its Italian Roots you probably know it by the name zucchino rampa this squash is truly like no other squash you could Harvest it as a summer squash
when it's young Tuck's trying to protect it I think like you see right here about 12 to 15 in is ideal we'll cut this off and you could cook it up like you would a zucchini you could just sauté it and it has a nice slightly nutty flavor like the castal Romanesco does relatively mild and overall it's just delicious when you use it as a summer squash like this it has a nice tender texture to it it has a nice little crisp when it's raw and I haven't really tried them raw that many times so
let's see if it actually tastes good raw let's let's get a bite [Music] H really really good flavor packed with water relatively mild a little more mild than the zucchini is overall absolutely fantastic flavor I mean you can't be a squash like this you can see how juicy it is on the inside you could also let the fruit get larger and mature and use it as a winter squash you could see these things get absolutely massive and there's so many on the plant I'll show you in just a little bit as it matures the flavor
deepens and the flesh becomes denser when they ripen they get a tan orange like color to them and are great for baking and pies and are often used for stuffing noyi and raviolis when used as a winter squash the fruit will last for so long it's unbelievable I grew this last year and took a few of them inside and used them over the winter one I saved and it stayed good all winter long and by the time I transplanted out my zucchino rampicante this year the fruit from last year was still good you can essentially
have a NeverEnding supply of squash with this incredible and versatile plant another thing I like about the zucchino rampante that some people may not like is that it heads into heavy production later than some of the other squash plants for instance the galbert englisher custard squash that only takes about 50 days from seed to harvest while the zucchino rampante takes about 70 days I find that to be a relatively good thing though because when some of your other squash plants are starting to slow down and give up like the custard squash or any other Patty
pan squash or maybe the castar Romanesco those are slowing down this thing hits its full stride and it kicks out so much fruit it's literally hard to keep up with just look at this plant you saw the two I harvested already there's a big one right here peek over there there's another one just over there swing to your left there's more off this one plant and then come over here this thing is growing underneath the apple tree and there's three more squash right here I mean it's tough to keep up with how much food this
thing kicks out and it grows so prolifically late in the season again some of the other squash are quitting they might have issues with some of the Vine boes this thing just never stops kicking out food it's pretty evident that this plant takes up a lot of space look at it just growing throughout my whole garden and this is only one plant it has no problem climbing up and over anything look at it growing on this apple tree it doesn't seem to be bothering the apples that much though still getting nice production out of this
honey crisp apple right here so make sure if you plant this you do have a good amount of space part of me want wers why this plant isn't more popular for backyard gardeners because it's easy to grow it's prolific the fruit is delicious it's multi-functional and it rarely has any pest or disease issues I wonder if it's something maybe like Farmers don't want us to know about because they know we'll grow it and it's so easy to grow or maybe grocery stores don't want us to know about it because uh it's really popular in specialty
markets it's super sought after I read so I just wonder why a lot of us aren't growing this incredible versatile fruit it's a it's such a GameChanger in your garden especially if you had issues in the past growing uh some zucchini or some summer squash the reason for that is it's more closely related to like a butternut squash and this species like the butternut squash they are more resistant to your squash Vine boes and a lot of the other pests too like the cucumber beetles that's one of the reasons it can grow so well late
into the season when I started growing this squash variety I like it was a few years ago I was just blown away at how much it took over my garden it's like a pumpkin which takes over the garden so much but this thing you can use it in so many different ways so I think it's a higher value crop than something like the pumpkin and if you know some Italian grandmas or something I'm sure or I guess anyone Italian they would love some of this squash it's uh it's such an incredible plant and it's just
hilarious when you see this I mean it's fun to grow things that look this odd but sometimes when things look odd and they look cool they don't taste good this one bucks that Trend and it's a overall just such a fun thing to grow you have to get some planted next year if you've never grown it before it's one of the unbeatable squashes want a summer squash plant this want a winter squash plant this maybe that's one of the reasons we don't see it in food stores as much probably because because it doesn't fit in
one of those summer squash or winter squash typical categories it has its own category and that's one of the coolest things about it I think notice down here this is a squash that I planted early in the year the costado Romanesco look how much damage it has from some of the vine boes and stuff a bit unfortunate but the plant is still still doing relatively well and that's because I go by and I bury the stem in the ground so it reroots and kind of has a second form of life you could see some beautiful
zucchini on here and look at the bees having fun working one just flew in there he's hiding out another thing you could do I'll show you right over here is plant a second round of squash that's what I did and like early August I planted another round of zucchini you could see this one doesn't have any Vine board damage because I planted this after the vine Boors like are finished laying a lot of their eggs you'll notice though it's got a good amount of pattery milk that's developing on it as the weather's getting cooler even
though the new leaves look beautiful the zucchino rampante has better resistance to the powdery Milo and a lot of the other pest and disease issues so again it's an incredible squash to grow if you have had problems in the past growing some of the summer squashes and stuff but if you use some of the tips that I shared you like spraying it with the surround kin clay the summer squash that should help you to be able to grow some of the typical summer squash too if that's what you want me I like growing all the
different kinds I have enough space so I'm fortunate that I can do that but if you want to try to like trell us a squash and only grow one I think it's such a unique and really cool thing that you could grow one squash and choose whether it's a summer or a winter it puts the option in your own hands that's today's video Growers thanks for watching we hope you enjoyed it we hope you got something out of it me and Tuck hope that we unlocked a new variet of squash for you to grow one
that is so productive and if you have had issues growing other squash in the past maybe this can be the one which give you gives you the Harvest that you've always been hoping for and we hope that we did it some justice and we just think it's something everyone should be growing in their own backyard it's so awesome but I did fail a little bit this year in the fact that I didn't have this thing trellised over the top of my whole entire trellis one of the reasons that didn't is because of this hazelnut tree
right here it's shading out this section A little bit so the zucchino rampicante wanted to grow towards the light in that direction looking for the light and it's starting to come back to the trellis here but in the future I'm going to try to grow it on a trellis so I can have them all hanging down I think that would just look so awesome and the little boss we got him out here it's a nice day for him it's cool he's chilling he had his cucumber he's content he's happy don't forget to spam the hearts
down low for the little boss we wanted to send a thank you to one of our new channel members Katherine Kor thanks for being a part of Team grow thanks for having your hand in everything we're doing and growing back here if you want to be part of Team grow all you have to do is get a garden going then encourage other people to grow and then they can encourage other people to grow that's how team grow becomes this compounding and exponentially growing thing where you grow you share with someone they share with someone else
and we're all growing a better future together the team expands and grows and spreads out just like a zucchino rampante does we take our lessons from nature we learn from them and then we incorporate them into our lives because as the old saying goes the forest is the classroom and nature is the teacher we had a blast out here if you guys enjoy the video hit the like button hit the subs cribe button share with your friends sharing truly helps uh the channel but it also helps grow more gardens everywhere in the world and our
goal is to have a back a garden in every person's backyard that's what it's all about tuck and James we back to you again real soon we out
