Dirani Summer Squash Seeds

My favorite summer squash is this cousa type, which is often sold as "Mexican grey squash" in grocery stores. I'm in Orange County, CA, and I've also grown this same squash in the Phoenix area, where I used to live. I have three of these plants growing -- they were slow to germinate due to a wet and overcast spring. But, they are producing like gangbusters!! Yes, this squash has tender skin, but for those of us growing it for cooking and flavor, that's ideal. I've even used a mandoline and made a raw summer squash salad with herbs, red onion, and a vinaigrette. Perfect! The skin stays tender and edible even when the squash gets big. In my pic, that large one is over 4.5 lbs and the skin was still tender. This squash is also less susceptible to powdery mildew, which has about killed the yellow straight-neck squash growing next to it. I'll definitely be growing this again.

I grew one of these squash in addition to Cube of Butter last year in the community garden. It did wonderfully! The leaves were really attractive with their silver mottling, and the squash were easy to spot and pick before they got massive. Note I said massive and not big. They seem to double in size practically overnight. The skin does mark up easily after harvesting but because it's so thin it's tender and delicious cooked. The flavor and texture was excellent, and the thin skins meant it grated well for baked goods in addition to grilling and baked dishes where it was sliced in rounds. The only complaint if any was that between this and my other squash I could hardly keep up with the production. I finally let a couple of the squash grow to maturity and halt production as my freezer (and my palate) couldn't take any more squash on the menu. I didn't have any trouble with disease or insects other than fighting a little bit of powdery mildew very late in the season that spread from my pumpkins. But it resisted a very long time and I hadn't been proactively treating it. I saved seeds from the squash I let grow to full size and am looking forward to planting (one!) again this year and passing them along to fellow community garden folks as well.

so, i garden in phoenix, az. seasons are SHORT. planted at the end of july we got 30-40 % germination, but the plants that sprouted came along gangbusters in an extremely hot summer. we picked our first squash 48 days from planting. they are tasty small , medium, and yes, there is always one that gets away, LARGE! we composted the plant the 3rd week of december, after picking a few more baby squash, frost got it in the end! even under frost cloth. yes, we do get frost in Phoenix! we have planted this in early spring, and get a great harvest into june before the high temperatures and the squash bugs render squash redundant. it is a favorite among all the volunteers who work in the demo garden at he maricopa county cooperative extension office!

I picked up a packet of these seeds in 2018 from my local garden center, and they got lost in the shuffle of my seed collection for FOUR YEARS; this past spring I just decided to plant them on a whim, not expecting them to be terribly viable, but -- surprise! They were! Three mounds, with three seeds each, and six came up! Thinned them down to one per mound and decided to see where the fates took them. Well let me warn you, we have red clay soil that leans alkaline, and all I did was mix a shovelful of compost into the mounds and fertilized it with fish emulsion every month... on top of that, I can only get up to my garden about once a week to water, and we had no rain from mid-April until November... These DIRANI Squash THRIVED! When all my winer squash gave up the ghost or my yellow or green summer zucchini barely stumbled through survival in our 116-degree August heatwaves, these Dirani were still producing! They were flavorful, they didn't become bitter in the heat, and their pale and unusual color made my family and neighbors happy to take them off my hands when I was drowning in fruits! So, I came back to order more! This is now my go-to summer squash for my high-heat and low-water garden! Not to mention, the seed viability was a major bonus: I now know better; I won't need more than one or two plants this summer, and I can confidently save the rest of the seeds for next year!