Growing Cucuzza

Have you ever tried cucuzza? If you didn't know any better, you might think that someone was asking you if you'd done something terribly naughty. It's amazing to me that so few people seem to know what a cucuzza, never mind that so few people have actually eaten them. I spent my early years in a mixed Italian and Polish neighborhood, back in the 1960s. Most of our nuclear families still had at least one member who immigrated from either Italy or Poland! I remember these long, strange-looking vegetables growing in many gardens, although I never knew (at the time) what they were called.

Time marches, of course. I moved out of the area. I never saw anything resembling these vegetables in any grocery store, although I may have done if I'd gone into a local Italian grocery. Eventually, I completely forgot about this childhood vegetable. Then, I moved into Mississippi and met Dan.

Dan is the inveterate experimental gardener. If it's spiky or from another country or if it's a different color than you think a vegetable should be, Dan will stick a cutting or a seed into the ground and wait for it to grow. I admire his spirit of adventure. He has both trombocino squash and cucuzza--both Sicilian favorites--in an area that gardens based how their grandparents did it when the town was first settled! I recognized the cucuzza by sight the first time I saw it hanging from his trellis, even though he had to tell me what it was called.

A Little Cucuzza History and Stuff

Being a gourd, the cucuzza (Lagenaria siceraria) shares an illustrious history that potentially goes back to the first domesticated crops. All kinds of origins are suggested for the domesticated gourd, the most likely being Asia and/or Africa (Agrella). Dictionary.com places the early squash cultivation somewhere around 10,000 years ago, in Mexico. The names by which the cucuzza is known suggests its varied history: calabash, serpent of Sicily, Tasmania bean (Pierce).

The cucuzza's vines are extremely long and like to climb. I've had great success at using old ex-pen panels mounted on t-posts. The vines continue to reach for more support even after they've exceeded the height that I've provided but will happily traverse a horizontal panel if allowed. I've also cut away and eaten some of the shoots of very long vines, which simply causes the vines to branch. Although they're self-pollinating (bees are their pollinators, in general), I have had the most success with hand pollination when the flowers open at dusk. I'm really looking forward to growing my very own cucuzza from my very own hand-gathered seeds next year!

Squash or Gourd?

A lot of sources lump the cucuzza in with summer squash. Cucuzza is, in fact, a true gourd with white flowers instead of yellow, like squash. To be 100% honest, both gourds and squash belong to the same family, separated primarily by their edibility (squash, mostly) and their utility/decorative nature (gourds, mostly). And, again, in the interest of being 100% honest, the cucuzza belongs to the Cucurbitaceae family, which covers roughly 900 species. This same family covers the pattypan, which I've written about, as well as the acorn squash. Interestingly, the pattypan is classified as a summer squash, the acorn squash is termed a summer squash, and the cucuzza as an edible gourd. To make things even more interesting, the acorn squash is like cucuzza, technically a gourd because the rind can be used in long-lasting and decorative ways. (And people wonder why it takes YEARS to learn about proper gardening!)

Although it is not, in fact, a summer squash, cucuzza can be used as one when the fruit is mature but is still young and tender. As the gourd matures, it becomes less tasty, but the rind can be dried, hollowed out, and used for decorations, scoops, or even water dippers--all very good news for Rennies and historical reenactors everywhere. The circumference of the cucuzza can be impressive for a squash, but it's not nearly as useful for storage as the "bushel basket gourd" and can't house large birds, like the "birdhouse gourd."

Is Cucuzza Easy to Grow?

I find that it's very easy to grow, as long as the conditions are right. All I did was break up my ground with the hand cultivator and scatter in some compost and some goat manure. Once those were added, I used the cultivator again to mix everything thoroughly and raked up a row of dirt for them to set roots into. My garden is still relatively new, with heavy clay underneath a thin layer of topsoil, so I always rake up a row that's several inches tall even for crops that aren't strictly row crops.

Once the row was ready, I poked shallow holes into it roughly eighteen inches apart, planting two seeds in each hole. I covered each hole with a thin layer of soil and then mulched with untreated pine straw. After all the seeds were planted, I put on the sprinkler for about an hour, just to ensure that they had enough moisture to get a start. We had plenty of rain for them every week during April and May. Currently, I'm turning on the sprinkler whenever my plants seem a bit droopy, letting it go for about an hour or so.

Over the years, we've had uneven success growing cucuzza, although that might have been because our weather has not been ideal for gardening over the past two years. One year, Dan planted a large plot of them with an overhead wire trellis and we had more than what we could eat. The next year, we got almost none, from seeds we had saved, the following year we got plenty of vines, but no female blossoms. Last year, of course, the weather was horrible, even for tropicalish vines like cucuzza. The drought killed all of the vines by mid-July, leaving us only with the seeds from the previous year. I used the last of our seeds in my garden, just to see if we'd get anything from them, and Dan ordered new seeds from a nursery that sells heirloom seeds for next year. We'll combine the new seeds with seeds from my garden next year to help prevent inbreeding depression, as I don't have enough room to plant a lot of vines.

Keep in mind, I keep an organic garden. I plant heirloom seeds from past years in ground that hasn't been touched by chemical fertilizer since at least 1979. I don't see a lot of pests, because my free-range chickens take care of a lot of bugs. I rarely prune or take special measures for most of my plants, unless I'm going to eat what I prune back or feed it to the goats. Your success, should you try to grow cucuzza, will probably differ from mine even using the methods that I describe. If you do try to grow some, please let me know how you do!

But Does it Taste Good?!

In my opinion, cucuzza is well worth the little bit of effort that it takes to plant and to hand pollinate them. I like them prepared the same way that I like any other summer squash, sauteed in butter with some onion and a bit of garlic and seasoning. Cucuzza seem to have a slightly firmer flesh than summer squash, although they are still quite tender when picked early enough. I find that they are also quite good when "quick" pickled and I'm looking forward to making bread and butter pickles with them. IF we get enough cucuzza this year, I am also thinking of trying to make bread, which is similar to a zucchini bread.

As usual, whenever I write one of these blogs, I find new and interesting things in my research. I now have a new recipe for fermented cucuzza that I want to try, as well as a new recipe for a tomato-based soup made with tenerumi, spring onion, and pasta. One nice thing about writing about my garden is that it will never allow me to run out of ideas!

References

As usual, I like to offer some factual information to back up my knowledge of the topic. I hope you enjoy them as much as I did!

Agrella, Randel A. Gorgeous Ornamental Gourds. (2016). Mother Earth Gardener.

https://www.motherearthgardener.com/plant-profiles/ornamental-gourds-zmaz15fzcwil/.

Dictionary.com (2021). “Squash” vs. “Gourd”: Can You Taste The Difference? https://www.dictionary.com/e/squash-vs-gourd/.

Pierce, Rebekah. (2021). How to Plant and Grow Italian Cucuzza Squash. https://gardenerspath.com/plants/vegetables/grow-italian-cucuzza-squash/.

This video provides really great information about hand pollinating cucuzza. Unlike the narrator, I directly seed my plants into the ground, but you could plant the seeds in peat pots and put them in the ground after they've been started.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hyyWljuWgEs

Pasta with Tenerumi (soup) https://cesarine.com/en/blog/cesarine-cookbook/pasta-tenerumi-recipe