Tromboncino was an exceptionally productive winter squash in my garden this year, in Virginia zone 7. Maybe a little too productive, if you get my drift. It’s the kind of vine that doesn’t take no for an answer as it attempts to sprawl its way to garden domination.
In the end, two plants plus total neglect yielded about a dozen fruit, roughly 6 pounds each. Area for area, this was more productive than butternut squash, this year, by a large margin.
But how does it taste?
OK. Neither as colorful nor as flavorful as Waltham butternut. But no off notes, either. It’s a perfectly adequate winter squash for adding bulk to (say) a soup, without altering the taste.
Easy to grow, productive, and edible. And an amusing shape. What’s not to like? I’ll be growing this again next year.
Details follow.
I did not set out to grow tromboncino as winter squash.
The back-story is in this post, below. I grew both tromboncino and cucuzzi (guinea bean) to use the immature fruits as a substitute for summer squash. That, because I’m tired of fighting the squash vine borer.
As a substitute for summer squash, that was a failure. More for cucuzzi, which to me had a distinctive “dirt” undertone, than for tromboncino. But neither of them was good compared to the taste of normal (e.g., straightneck yellow) summer squash.
Post G24-023: Taste test of tromboncino, cucuzzi, and yellow summer squash.
So I killed the cucuzzi, but let the two tromboncino vines live. They turned out to be the most productive winter squash I grew this year, by a large margin.
I won’t be buying winter squash any time soon.
How does it compare to butternut?
I took my smallest, seemingly-mature tromboncino fruit, and a small butternut, and had it it.
Tromboncino is clearly a relative of butternut squash. Same color. It peels easily, like butternut, but it takes longer to peel, per edible pound, as the long, thin neck of the tromboncino has around about twice the peel area, per unit of volume, relative to the stockier butternut.
The flesh is a paler orange (right, below).
I ended up throwing away the seed-cavity end of the tromboncino. This squash has a large, bulbous, thin-walled seed cavity. I dug out some seeds, but decided that between peeling it and de-seeding it, I’m guessing I’d have gotten another half-pound of usable squash. Didn’t seem worth the effort, so I chucked it. I might reconsider that when I get around to cooking the larger ones. Might also make “roasted pumpkin seeds” out of the bigger ones, depending on the volume of seeds.
Steamed or boiled, tromboncino is blander than butternut. I get no “sweet potato” notes whatsoever. Instead, there’s a faint aromatic after-taste that reminds me vaguely of steamed yellow summer squash. In any event, tromboncino has a distinctively different taste from butternut, but not much of a taste.
In chicken-squash soup, both squashes are bland enough that they contribute bulk, but no noticeable flavor. If I closed my eyes, I would not have known I was eating diced squash as opposed to somewhat-overcooked diced potato.
Bottom line
Assuming this keeps fairly well, I will definitely plant this again, owing to the high productivity and the toughness of the plant. By eye, these two vines (allowed to sprawl) out-produced all the rest of my winter squash combined.
Better yet, once these were established, I did nothing other than kick them out of the way occasionally. (The same can be said for butternut in my garden. Nothing seems to bother it much.)
Compared to butternut, it’s paler, blander, and has an unusual hint of summer squash to it. But that’s pretty subtle, and in a soup or stew, it serves merely as a bland filler. Not necessarily a bad thing, for a winter squash.
See also:
Post G24-025: Squash-off, round 1: Waltham Butternut versus Georgia Candy Roaster.
