The Garden at 485 Elm
People growing together:
a collaborative community garden in Montpelier, Vermont
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Lusciously Beautiful Winter Squash Harvest

Sometimes a perfect crop is ready for harvest on a perfect day.

Here at the Garden at 485 Elm, we harvest all the winter squash at once. Then we count how many we have of each variety, divide it by the number of gardeners’ households (this year: 17), and put them out for gardeners to collect.

Delicata squash grew beautifully and, in one case, unusually from Vermont’s High Mowing Organic Seeds.
These Waltham butternut squashes are as beautiful as the photos on the packets of Burpee seed we grew them from.
One of these Burgess buttercups could provide a meal for a whole family.
The little squashes in front of the basket are available for gardeners to grab and not counted for the shares. Though these minis are not store-display ready, being immature and sometimes ABC squashes (nibbled by voles), they are just as tasty and nutritious.
These delicious-looking squashes are most likely High Mowing Organic Seeds Honeynut Butternut Squash. We (okay, I) paid more attention to gardening than record keeping.
Here are squash shares, ready for gardeners to come take. A share consists of 6 delicatas, 5 butternuts, 1 buttercup, 1 (likely) honeynut butternut, and a few rando immature and ABC squashes the voles have nibbled on.
The final task is pulling squash vines and carting them in wheelbarrows down to the garden waste windrow. The compost for this season’s garden came from previous seasons’ garden waste composted into a rich, nutrient-dense garden soil addition.

This is a mix of seeds from zucchini and every variety of winter squash we grew. What a delicious and nutrition-packed snack! I’ll never compost seeds again—too tasty.

  1. Separate seeds from winter & summer squash. I don’t bother getting the squash stuff off the seeds; it’s delicious too.
  2. Toss seeds & squash stuff with a little olive oil, salt, and pepper.
  3. Roast them at 350 degrees or less on a nonstick surface. Taste as they’re getting brown. When they’re delicious to you, they’re done.
    If you have any left over (doubtful!), they refrigerate nicely in a covered container.