For the final winter squash variety that we’ll show off for you all this year, we present a long time cold climate favorite of ours. Golden Nugget!
A rather small buttercup type of squash, this variety took the All America award way back in 1966. Typical fruit weigh in between one to three pounds, with a single plant sometimes producing up to six to eight total squash. Unlike a lot of winter squash, the plant doesn’t get absolutely massive and take over every square foot of your garden.
Golden Nugget fairly reliably produces in 90 to 100 days. In years past, we’ve always gotten fully mature (orange) squash from this plant. Our cooler summer that we saw this year definitely impacted several of our squash varieties, including this one, but this “mostly mature” state will be just fine for eating. (We’re also seeing a little bit of off-the-vine maturation as well.)
Interestingly, this particular squash variety was bred to act as a sweet potato substitute, particularly for climates like ours where growing sweet potatoes is a simple impossibility. The sweet and earthy flavor of this squash will definitely remind you of sweet potatoes, so if you’re lamenting not being able to grow them, this might be a good alternative for you.
Our favorite thing about this squash is that it’s truly “bite sized.” To use it, you don’t have to commit to a major pumpkin or other large squash. A single squash is suitable for one person! That’s seemingly a tall order in the squash world and we love not “having” to plan out multiple meals around a squash that we want to break into.
We’ve been growing this variety for quite a long time, long enough that it’s hard to pinpoint when we started growing them. It’s definitely a hands down favorite in our repertoire. If the things we’ve said about it here ring your bell, we’d definitely recommend giving Golden Nugget a shot in your garden!
