Vitamin A, calories, and no jar required if you have a cool room.

Sow

Hills after May 15, or start indoors May 1. Two plants per hill, thin to the best.

Spacing

Hills 4–6 ft apart. Give them a compost trench — they are hogs.

Days

90–110

Harvest

Rinds hard, ground-spot orange or cream, stem corky. Cut with 2 in of stem. Never carry by the stem.

Store

Cure 10 days at 80°F if you can (a sunny porch). Then 50–55°F, dry. Butternut lasts longest. Acorn is a short keeper.

Seed

Squash cross. Bag female flowers and hand-pollinate in the morning, or grow one type.

Companions

Corn, beans, nasturtium. Keep cucumbers and melons away if you are seed-saving.

Pests

Squash vine borer — wrap stem bases with foil, watch for frass, slit and kill the grub, bury the wounded stem so it reroots. Squash bug eggs on leaf undersides — crush weekly.

One healthy butternut vine can give 8–15 fruits. That is a lot of winter soup.