Rare Squash Varieties You've Never Heard Of

Most seed racks carry the same half dozen faces every spring, and there is nothing wrong with them. But if you have grown a Waltham or two and you are ready for something with a story, the rare squash varieties below are the ones worth clearing bed space for. Every one of them is an heirloom that has been grown, saved and handed along by real gardeners for generations, and every one of them earns its spot in a Kansas garden for reasons beyond looking unusual.

Here is the practical part first. Nearly all of these belong to Cucurbita moschata, the species with the hard, dense stems that squash vine borers struggle to tunnel. That single fact is why a rare squash from Kyoto or Morocco often outgrows a common orange field pumpkin in a hot Kansas July. If you want the science behind that, our explainer on what makes Cucurbita moschata different covers it in full.

Shishigatani, the Kyoto Temple Squash

Shishigatani looks like an hourglass someone left out in the sun. Deep ribs, a tan hide that wrinkles as it cures, and a shape no grocery store would know what to do with. It has been grown around Kyoto since the early 1800s and still turns up in temple cooking there, simmered slowly because the flesh is dense and nutty rather than sweet and wet.

Growing it in Kansas

Give it room, because the vines run long, and give it time. Shishigatani wants close to 100 days, so it goes in the ground early and comes off late. The reward is a squash that cures hard and keeps on a basement shelf for months. Full details are in the Shishigatani growing guide, and seed is available as Shishigatani squash seeds.

Sucrine du Berry, the French Sugar Squash

This one comes out of the Berry region of central France and it is the variety we hand to people who say they do not like winter squash. The fruit is small, roughly football sized, with smooth tan skin and flesh so sweet and fine grained that it needs almost nothing done to it. Halve it, roast it, eat it with a spoon.

Small fruit is a real advantage in a home garden. You get more squash per vine and each one is a single dinner rather than a two week commitment. Sucrine du Berry matures faster than most of the giants on this list, which makes it a sound pick if your season ran short or you started late. The Sucrine du Berry growing guide walks through spacing and harvest timing, and you can find Sucrine du Berry seeds in the shop.

Kikuza, the Chrysanthemum Squash

Kikuza takes its name from the chrysanthemum, and once you see the deep radial ribbing pressed into that buff colored skin the name makes perfect sense. It is a Japanese heirloom that nearly vanished from commerce and survived because seed savers kept passing it hand to hand.

The flavor is where it earns its keep. Kikuza is dry fleshed and genuinely spicy, closer to a sweet potato than to a pie pumpkin, and it improves in storage rather than fading. Cure it properly and let it sit a month before you cook it. Our Kikuza growing guide has the harvest cues, and Kikuza squash seeds are stocked in packs of 10 to 20 seeds.

Magdalena Big Cheese, the Desert Survivor

If your garden bakes, this is your squash. Magdalena Big Cheese comes out of the Southwest, where it was grown in dry heat that would flatten a lot of northern varieties, and it carries that toughness with it. Broad, flattened, cheese wheel shaped fruit in a soft buff color, and a plant that keeps setting when the thermometer refuses to come down.

Kansas summers have more in common with the Southwest than we sometimes admit. Late July heat is exactly when a lot of pumpkin patches stall out and drop their blossoms, and a variety bred in that kind of weather simply keeps going. The Magdalena Big Cheese growing guide covers watering through a dry spell, and seed is here as Magdalena Big Cheese seeds.

Musquee de Maroc, the Warted Moroccan

The newest addition to our rare shelf and probably the most striking thing in the garden. Musquee de Maroc is a North African heirloom with heavy warting, deep lobes, and a color that shifts from green to burnished bronze as it ripens. People stop walking when they see it on a porch.

It is not just a decoration, though. The flesh underneath is thick, deep orange and excellent for cooking, and like the rest of the moschata family it shrugs off heat and stands up well to borer pressure. Read the Musquee de Maroc growing guide before you plant, because it needs a long season, and grab Musquee de Maroc seeds early if you want them.

Why Bother with Rare Squash Varieties at All?

Three honest reasons. The first is resilience. These are open-pollinated heirlooms that survived because they produced reliably somewhere difficult, without a breeding program propping them up, and that toughness travels.

The second is flavor. Commercial squash is bred for shipping weight and uniform shape, and taste comes third at best. An heirloom that stayed in circulation for two centuries stayed because somebody liked eating it.

The third is that you can save the seed. Because these are open-pollinated, seed from your best fruit grows out true to type next season, provided you keep varieties from crossing. Grow a rare squash once and you can keep it forever, which is how every variety on this page reached us in the first place.

Start with one or two rather than all of them. Rare squash tends to need a long season and real space, and it is better to grow two varieties well than to crowd in a row of strangers and lose track of what did what.

Ready to grow something nobody else on your street has heard of? Browse the Rare Moschata Collection for the full lineup of unusual heirlooms, or start with the Weird & Wonderful Heirlooms Bundle if you would rather let us pick the introductions for you.

All seeds ship from Newton, Kansas. Free shipping on qualifying US orders.