Green Pumpkins?

[Jules]

Even though I have two full greenhouses, a full cold frame, a potato patch and seven different fruit plants.... I still seem to want more!

Out driving yesterday we went past a church which had a sign up saying "Gardeners Day Fair". "Stop the car" I yelled at The Bloke, who sighed and parked up. It was pretty rubbish actually with mostly old ladies meeting up to sell teeny pots of forget-me-not (we have tons of it in the garden and currently trying to get rid of some) and to eat cake and drink tea.

Anyway, I found a small lone pot and in it was a small 'Green Pumpkin' plant. I had to buy the sorry looking thing and am going to give it a shot as I have a large enough patch beside the potatoes. Now the question is... are green pumpkins edible? Big? Decent? Worth it? Its one of the only things I've not tried growing yet. Any feedback welcome!!

[ina]

Considering how you describe the average attendant at that fair, it might well be not a pumpkin but a squash... I have Queensland Blue, for example, which is a squash, more green than blue, and looks like a pumpkin! And there are others that are green/ish. I think it'll be a matter of wait and see.

But I'm like you: I don't think I could have resisted buying that plant, either!

[Millymollymandy]

I don't think it matters what you call them (according to my preserving book written by an Australian - Queensland Blues are pumpkins). I call everything pumpkin, not squash (hate that word, so Americanised).

The French are a bally nuisance - I had some Citrouille jam which was bright yellow and very tasty. Is that a kind of pumpkin I asked in my best French? Non! it's a Citrouille! was the reply.

Well I googled and all it is is a bloody halloween pumpkin!

Anyway enjoy your pumpkin or squash or whatever you want to call it. It sounds like it needed a nice new home.

[ina]

I don't think it matters what you call them (according to my preserving book written by an Australian - Queensland Blues are pumpkins). I call everything pumpkin, not squash (hate that word, so Americanised).

I first thought that squash was American for pumpkin... But all the gardening books seem to make a difference - so I thought I'd try and make the distinction as well! And then there's summer squash and winter squash...

[theabsinthefairy]

I grow table queens alongside my normal big max halloween pumpkings, so I get big green and yellow pumpkins, they taste fine and grow quite big - I tend to cut them at basketball size, to roast for a meal for 4 people.

[Ellendra]

I don't think it matters what you call them (according to my preserving book written by an Australian - Queensland Blues are pumpkins). I call everything pumpkin, not squash (hate that word, so Americanised).

I first thought that squash was American for pumpkin... But all the gardening books seem to make a difference - so I thought I'd try and make the distinction as well! And then there's summer squash and winter squash...

Pumpkin is one particular type of squash.

And yes, its an Americanized word, its also an American vegetable. Just as one doesn't expect vegetables like bak choy or shingoku to have english names.

[Millymollymandy]

The word squash has only just started being used in recent years - before that everything was called pumpkin! When I travelled in Australia and New Zealand everyone there ate roast pumpkin and never was the word squash ever mentioned.

I only heard squash being used by Americans and I didn't know what it was - and in fact it is only on this forum that I've heard it being used by British people. To the British and I think the Aussies and Kiwis too, (and this needs to be put on our Ish dictionary ) squash is a fruit drink which is diluted with water. But then young people probably don't know what squash the drink is any more because they've probably been brought up on fizzy stuff.

I just don't like seeing words that are perfectly good and have done us fine for decades, being changed.

[ina]

The word squash has only just started being used in recent years - before that everything was called pumpkin! When I travelled in Australia and New Zealand everyone there ate roast pumpkin and never was the word squash ever mentioned.

Too true! I knew Queensland Blue from Australia as a pumpkin - it was only in a recent seed catalogue in the UK that I read it's a squash...

To the British and I think the Aussies and Kiwis too, (and this needs to be put on our Ish dictionary ) squash is a fruit drink which is diluted with water. But then young people probably don't know what squash the drink is any more because they've probably been brought up on fizzy stuff.

And all those drinks are called "juice" here - at least here in Scotland. Got me quite confused at first - when somebody offered me juice and got out a can of coke...