Smooth Criminal Squash Seeds

Days to Maturity: 41

This squash plant will steal your heart with its easy-pick plant habit and tasty, tender fruit.

Smooth Criminal has a totally unique, indeterminate growth habit. It continually grows upright, setting more and more fruit along the central stem as it grows. This trait, combined with spineless stems makes it so easy to pick fruit, no more digging into the center of a spiny, scratchy plant and tearing up your arms. It bears very tender, pale yellow, straight-neck squash that are excellent quality and tasty grilled, sautéed and baked.

A growers' favorite in the south, these vigorous bushes bear high-quality fruit across multiple harvests. A great choice for any region of the country, with terrific yields of top-notch eating. It is trouble free and very adaptable, no matter what kind of soil or weather your garden has.

Summer squash ripens during the hot summer months and, thin-skinned, is best eaten fresh. Sow seeds 1 inch deep directly into the garden after the danger of frost is past. Thin the seedlings to 24 inches apart, or plant several seeds in hills 4 feet apart and then thin to 2 plants per hill. (For even earlier harvests, start seeds indoors.) Pick when the fruits are still small (4 to 8 inches long).