Cucurbita maxima.
A heirloom variety from the Maya agricultural tradition, cultivated for centuries on the Guatemalan highlands and well adapted to altitude and to the marked seasons of the mountain regions of Central America. Its name evokes its most striking feature — a powdery blue-grey skin, almost ashen, that gives this large oblong fruit shaped like an elongated banana (40 to 70 cm long, 5 to 10 kg in weight, sometimes more) an almost sculptural look. Known locally as ayote, it remains an essential ingredient of traditional Guatemalan cooking, where it goes into soups, empanadas and above all into the famous dulce de ayote, a traditional confection in which the flesh is slowly candied in a syrup spiced with panela.
Thick, deep orange flesh — dense, dry, sweet and nutty — one of the best culinary qualities among winter squashes, comparable to the best Potimarron or Hubbard. Versatile: roasted in quarters in the oven, simmered in velouté, included in a Thai curry, puréed for gnocchi, or cooked long in sauce with maple and cinnamon for a pie filling. But its true superpower is keeping — a well-ripened and skin-cured blue squash easily holds 6 to 8 months in a cold room, sometimes up to a year for the finest specimens. Suffice it to say it's one of the rare summer crops that can feed a family in the dead of February, with the same freshness of flavour as at harvest.
Grower's tip: 110 to 130 days to maturity — it's a variety for patient and well-organized gardeners. Indoor start 3 to 4 weeks before transplanting (never more — cucurbits hate long stays in a pot), transplant in early June once the soil is solidly warmed. Give it plenty of room — the vines run 4 or 5 metres and each plant can produce 2 to 3 enormous fruits if you let it — and a particularly rich soil, amended with a good dose of mature compost or well-rotted manure. Limit the number of fruits per plant (2 or 3 maximum) by pinching off extra flowers from mid-August on, to ensure that the remaining ones reach full maturity before frost. Harvest before the first serious frost, when the blue skin no longer marks under the fingernail, keeping 8 to 10 cm of stem.
- Open-pollinated. Monoecious, bee-pollinated; crosses with other Cucurbita maxima (giant pumpkins, hubbards, buttercups, kabochas) — isolate for seed saving.
- Vine length: 4 to 5 m. Really plan the space, or train on a sturdy fence.
- Maturity: 110 to 130 days after transplant.
- Exposure: full sun, sheltered from wind.
- Very rich, deep soil, heavy with organic matter. Space plants 2 m apart in all directions, or grow in widely spaced mounds.
- Indoor start 3 to 4 weeks before last frost, or direct-sow in a mound in early June once the soil is at 18 °C minimum. For Québec, indoor start is strongly recommended to gain the weeks needed for full maturity.
