Butternut squash
hwoodfield
Posts: 10
in Fruit & veg
To help my butternut squash to thrive do I need to cut back new growth, new gardener to veg and very keen
0
hwoodfield
Posts: 10
hwoodfield
Posts: 10
hwoodfield
Posts: 10
hwoodfield
Posts: 10
To help my butternut squash to thrive do I need to cut back new growth, new gardener to veg and very keen
Posts
Yes, you do hwoodfield. We let the plant have a few shoots, then once the squash have formed we cut the ends of the shoots off. Difficult to explain, but we normally allow up to six squash per plant and each shoot has a few pairs of leaves. We remove flowers that don't have squash forming behind them.
If we didn't cut the ends off, the plant would just keep on growing more shoots, longer and longer. We want the plant energy to go into growing the established squash, not into forming more shoots and leaves. We water our plants 2 or 3 times a week depending on the weather, and feed the plants once a week. This process works for us.
I am very new to growing this type of veg, is it normal for some of get veg to go brown at the ends once you cut back. Also where is the best place to cut please? I've got so much to learn. Also tried to google and watch videos but they don't give me much idea lol
Thank you, I will do that. Yes it's the developing squas. It's after I've cut back the runners as I thought I needed to do that
Yes it went soft and yellow, it was growing
I know they are thirsty plants especially when the flowers and fruits are forming, but did you over water them hwoodfield or were the squash sitting on very wet soil? If you had a spell of weather with very little sunshine or plenty of rain I imagine that the plants could be over watered and this could make the squash soft and mushy.
As far as I know there is nothing you can do once this has happened, but I can't talk from experience as we have never had soft squash. Sorry not to be more helpful.
That's ok, maybe down to wet soil as we have had a lot of rain of the last month and not much sunshine. More rain forcasted for the next 48hrs
They were about 2-3inches in length, I do have a few doing very well, this is the first yr of growing them but only my second growing veg.