tromboncino – savemaple.org

G24-026: Squash-off, round II: Tromboncino versus Butternut.

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.

Post G24-023: Taste test of tromboncino, cucuzzi, and yellow summer squash.

Background: I’m trying two alternatives to traditional summer squash in my garden this year.

For this post, I steamed immature fruits from tromboncino and cucuzzi (a.k.a. zucchetta a.k.a. guinea bean), along with yellow summer squash from the store.

Above: Top is zuchetta, middle is yellow summer squash, bottom is tromboncino.

Here are my impressions

Steamed immature tromboncino squash tastes quite similar to yellow summer squash. The only giveaway is a slightly bitter note that yellow summer squash completely lacks. I’d phrase that as yellow summer squash tastes “sweeter” or perhaps “nuttier” than tromboncino.

(I’ve seen tromboncino described as having a “cucumber” note, and in hindsight, maybe I’m tasting a bitterness similar to that found in the undesirable part of a cucumber. But only a touch.)

Immature cucuzzi gourds? Quite a bit different from yellow summer squash. Charitably, even steamed, they have sort of a raw-green-bean note. Uncharitably, they kinda taste a little like dirt.

Not much. Not even close to spit-it-out bad. But a little goes a long way, when it comes to tasting like dirt.

In times of famine, sure, I’d eat either one.

The upshot is that if I were pining for summer squash, I’d get it at the grocery store. Second choice, I’d eat immature tromboncino. It’s not bad. Put some pasta sauce on it, and I wouldn’t know it wasn’t summer squash. But if the only option were guinea bean, I’d find something else to eat.

All of this, because the presence of squash vine borer in my area makes it a real chore to grow “regular” summer squash. Either I spray my plants for weeks on end, or I lose them to the vine borer.

Or I try something weirder, of which, growing then eating these two immature fruits as if they were summer squash, is one. Because, in theory, the squash vine borer won’t bother these alternatives. Or, at least, won’t outright kill them, usually.

Taste aside, the icing on the cake is poor productivity. At least, so far, for me, both have had abysmal yield. They are both sprawling, large-leaved squash/gourd vines that take up a lot of space. But fruits are few and far-between. (At least, in my garden, this year.)

Edit 9/8/2024: My two tromboncini vines finally started producing a reasonable number of fruit in late August. Large fruit. Very large fruit. If these will mature before first frost, tromboncini will have redeemed itself as a reasonably productive butternut-type winter squash. I still wouldn’t grow it as a summer-squash substitute.

For both plants, I can now stop eating the immature fruit and let some of it mature. Maybe. Tromboncino is in the butternut squash family, and apparently produces pretty good winter squash. So, mature, it ought to taste more like a butternut squash, which would be fine. The cucuzzi, it’s a gourd, but in theory I think you can eat that one once it’s mature, as well. I’m not sure I’m looking forward to that.

So the cucuzzi’s days may be numbered. I think I’d rather let the trombincino take over its space. (Edit 8/10/2024: About a week ago, I sliced through both cucuzzi (gourd) vines that I planted, at the roots. And yet, a small part of the cucuzzi vine appears to be alive. I know not how.)

YMMV.

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Post #G10: Squash Vine Borer: Thinking through neem and considering horticultural oil?

Edit 7/10/2022: A lot of people find this post every year, when the squash vine borer is around. This post is years old. Let me summarize where things ended up:

Read Post #G27 for a summary of everything I found out about squash vine borer (SVB).
Spraying spinosad solution (0.008%) onto the stems of my summer squash every five days worked fine. Kept the borer out, didn’t kill the bees. And it’s a short-lived non-synthetic poison, so it should generate minimal collateral damage. (E.g., won’t (or shouldn’t) build up in soil or fruit, run off and kill fish, or any of that. ) But that’s a lot of work, particularly given that the borer is around (in this climate) for eight weeks or so.
For 2022, I’m trying a completely different approach. I’m growing varieties of squash that don’t need to be pollinated (“parthenocarpic” varieties, Post G22-013). I’m growing them inside an insect-proof hoop house to keep out the vine borer. As of July 2022, that seems to be working OK. But I started those late, and I still haven’t harvested any squash yet.

Edit 7/24/2024: In the end, growing summer squash under netting, in my back-yard garden, was just too much hassle. And I didn’t get much yield. So this year I skipped the summer squash. Instead I’m growing what are supposed to be close substitutes: Tromboncino (a winter squash) and guinea bean (an edible member of the gourd family). These are solid-stemmed vines that, by reputation (and based on my experience this year), are not bothered by the SVB.

I can attest that immature (foot-long) trombincini fruits are an excellent substitute for zucchini. But the yield seems poor, relative to zucchini or yellow summer squash. It’s the end of July, the vines are huge, and so far I’ve picked two tromboncini, and the guinea bean has only started to set fruit. Maybe they’ll pick up the pace in the heat of August? But I’m not betting on it. I’m guessing the low yield makes sense, else we’d all have been planting tromboncini instead of summer squash all along.

The original post follows.

I’ll try to avoid my usual TLDR style and get to the point. A later section adds more detail.

I’m not going to try to get systemic protection using a neem “soil drench”. Maybe I am going to use neem oil as a horticultural oil spray, hoping to smother the eggs. But I am reluctant to do that, as nobody seems to be able to pin down why, exactly, neem oil should work against the SVB. And even for a relatively harmless poison like raw neem oil, I’m reluctant to spray that in volume around my garden, when I really have no clue what it’s supposed to be doing for me in this case.

Details follow. Continue reading Post #G10: Squash Vine Borer: Thinking through neem and considering horticultural oil?