How long doesSquashlast?
- Summer and zucchini4 days to 5 days
- Winter1 month to 3 months
The USDA rates 2 kinds of this separately
The USDA files 2 separate entries under this name — summer and zucchini and winter — and they do not keep for the same time: Squash, summer and zucchini holds 4 days to 5 days outside the freezer, Squash, winter holds 1 month to 3 months.
The shortest of these, Squash, summer and zucchini at 5 days, is a quality window, and past it the food is judged by look and smell.
Every storage figure the USDA publishes for this item
All three places the USDA recognizes are rated here — pantry, refrigerator and freezer — which only 65 of the 466 foods in the data manage. The source also indexes it as summer, zucchini and winter.
Squash, summer and zucchini
- In the freezer10 months to 12 months
- Unopened · in the pantry1 day to 5 days
- Unopened · in the fridge4 days to 5 days
Squash, winter
- In the freezer10 months to 12 months
- Unopened · in the pantry2 weeks to 6 weeks
- Unopened · in the fridge1 month to 3 months
Turning the range into a date
Each kind gets its own dated rows here, 6 rows across the 2 the USDA lists under this name, because a date is only worth printing against the window it belongs to.
Squash, summer and zucchini
- In the freezerUse by10 months to 12 months after the day you bought it
- Unopened · in the pantryUse by1 day to 5 days after the day you bought it
- Unopened · in the fridgeUse by4 days to 5 days after the day you bought it
Squash, winter
- In the freezerUse by10 months to 12 months after the day you bought it
- Unopened · in the pantryUse by2 weeks to 6 weeks after the day you bought it
- Unopened · in the fridgeUse by1 month to 3 months after the day you bought it
It is past the date. Now what?
Say the shortest window under this name — Squash, summer and zucchini at 1 day to 5 days in the pantry — has run out. Past that the calendar stops deciding and the food itself does. Mold, a slimy or sticky surface, soft or darkened spots, or a sour smell mean it goes out whatever the date says.
The USDA rating this place at all is the USDA saying Squash, summer and zucchini keeps there, so the figure rates how good it will be. The FoodKeeper entry this page is built from prints storage times and nothing else, so anything past them here is USDA and FSIS guidance rather than a figure from the source. The whole rule, including the cases the source does not cover, is set out under what to do when the date has passed.
Two places, and one of them is the wrong one
The USDA rates two places for Squash, summer and zucchini in one state and they disagree: 4 days to 5 days in the fridge against 1 day to 5 days in the pantry. Of the two, the refrigerator is the longer. Both figures are the USDA's own, so this is a choice of where to put the food rather than a disagreement about how long it keeps.
Items that behave the same way
Squash carries no single window to compare — its 2 kinds each keep their own — so these 6 are simply what the USDA rates on the same shelf, shortest first: Corn on the cob at 2 days through Avocados at 4 days.
Products the USDA rates in the same places
12 other products are rated in exactly these places — freezer from the day of purchase, pantry from the day of purchase and refrigerator from the day of purchase — out of the 466 in the file, so this is an uncommon shape of record. The nearest of them by keeping time are Eggplant, Garlic and Ginger root. They are listed below with their own answers, closest first, which is why this list differs from the one on their pages. The longest-keeping of them is Almonds at 8 months.
- Eggplant4 days sealed in the fridge
- Garlic1 month sealed in the pantry
- Ginger root2 weeks sealed in the fridge
- Okra2 days sealed in the fridge
- Onions2 months sealed in the fridgeyellow, white, red, etc.
- Rutabagas2 weeks sealed in the fridge
- Yuca/cassava7 days sealed in the pantry
- Almonds8 months sealed in the fridgeno shell
The record this page is built from
The USDA publishes 2 separate rows under this name — records 302 and 303 — and this page carries all of them rather than picking one, because their windows differ. Between them they fill 3 of the nine storage slots with a time. No one of the 2 is the kind the plain name means, so this page prints no single figure: the kinds are listed with their own windows and you pick yours. The same record answers to summer, zucchini and winter in the source's own index.
Where these numbers come from
Every range on this page is published by the USDA FoodKeeper and reproduced unchanged. The multipliers, the rankings, the percentages and the dates are ours, computed from those ranges. Where the source gives a span such as 3 to 5 weeks, comparisons use the upper figure, and the full span is always printed.
Rankings cover only the items the USDA gives a usable figure for, and identical ranges share a place rather than being ordered arbitrarily. Neighbors are chosen by nearest storage time within the same category, never alphabetically: two foods filed next to each other by name usually have nothing to do with each other. The freezer is excluded from ranking because it flattens almost everything.
Where the USDA lists several kinds under one name, they share one page here and every kind keeps its own windows: the source prints them as separate rows, and a page that merged them would be inventing a figure the source never published. Comparisons and the place in the category are computed for the kind the plain name means — the shell egg for eggs, the can for tuna — which is settled name by name rather than by the order the source lists its rows in, and the page names it. Where the plain name means no single kind, the page prints no single figure at all and lists the kinds instead.
Source: USDA FoodKeeper, retrieved 1 September 2026. This site computes every comparison on this page and takes responsibility for it. Found a figure that does not match the source? Tell us on the contact page, with the page and the row — the parsing is mechanical, so a mismatch is our bug and we want it. How the whole site is built, which figures are ours and where the source can be checked is on the method page.
USDA index terms: summer, winter, zucchini
KeepsUntil is an independent reference built on public USDA data. It is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or connected to the U.S. Department of Agriculture or the Food and Drug Administration. Whether a given window is a safety limit or a quality window is stated on the page that prints it.