Eybie Eyberg of Parkersburg holds gem squash from his garden at the Point Park Marketplace. The gem squash are abundant in Eyberg’s native South Africa but are rare in the Mid-Ohio Valley. (Photo by Paul LaPann)

PARKERSBURG — The Highmark West Virginia Community Garden at Point Park Marketplace has been filled this summer with tomatoes, green beans, peppers, lettuce, eggplant, kale, broccoli, zucchini and other vegetables and fruits.

But only one of the 48 raised beds in the garden along the floodwall has been yielding gem squash.

Eybie Eyberg, 80, a native of South Africa now living in Parkersburg, planted the gem squash seeds. Eyberg has been eating the gem squash, with its green skin and yellow fruit inside, since the age of 10.

Using seeds obtained from a Michigan resident, Eyberg has six gem squash plants growing on a trellis in his 12-foot by 4-foot plot in the Community Garden. He said this is too many plants to be growing in such a small space, because gem squash send out long vines. Three plants would have been better, he said.

The plants have produced 40 gem squash with a few more on the vines as of Tuesday. Eyberg said he had gem squash seeds from South Africa, where the squash is abundant, but they did not germinate in Parkersburg.

Gem squash require well-drained soil and the roots should remain damp, Eyberg said.

Gem squash the size of softballs have a richer taste than the smaller version, the size of baseballs, he said.

This year’s gem squash in the Community Garden are on their “last legs” of the season, since the seed planting in May, Eyberg said. He doesn’t plan to water his garden again this year.

To eat the gem squash, cut them in half and remove the seeds. Then boil the halves for about 25 minutes until they are tender, Eyberg said.

Eyberg puts salt, pepper, butter and nutmeg on the yellow fruit of the gem squash. The skin of the smaller squash can be eaten, he said. The gem squash also can be cooked in the oven, although Eyberg never has.

As a meal, Eyberg enjoys eating gem squash with mashed potatoes, a roast or ground beef. The larger gem squash can be kept for three months in a cool place, he said. Smaller ones remain fresh for a month.

Gem squash are inexpensive to buy in South Africa, Eyberg said. “Other squash are too watery,” he said. “I grew up with gem squash.”

Eyberg plays golf once a week in a Worthington Golf Club league. He played golf in South Africa before moving to West Virginia more than four years ago.

Eyberg became a U.S. citizen on Jan. 7 of this year. He wears a small U.S. flag pin on his shirt.

He and his wife, Caroline, who was born in Chicago, moved to Parkersburg because their daughter Jane Oosthuizen lived here. Jane and her husband, Brian, now live in Watertown, N.Y., where Jane has a residency in an internal medicine program, Eyberg said.

In South Africa Eyberg worked with the road department, as a soils mechanic and a typewriter mechanic. He spoke the Afrikaans language until he was 6 years old, at which time he learned English.

Eyberg was born in Durbanville, near Cape Town on the southwest coast of  South Africa. He lived in Rhodesia, now Zimbabwe, in southern Africa before returning to South Africa when he was 38 years old, he said.

Eyberg said he has the best of both worlds — living in the United States and having memories of South Africa.

“I miss South Africa when the snow is deep here,” Eyberg said.