Topic: Growing gourds

[Palustris]

After showing pictures of various squash, questions were asked about growing them. So come on all you experts, how about it?
Here in deepest darkest coldest Shropshire we have to grow most of the Winter Squash in the poly-tunnel. The vegetable spaghetti can be grown like courgettes.
All we do is start off the seeds as early as possible in the house and try to keep them warm and growing. They are planted out under fleece in the tunnel in as rich a soil as we can provide and then just watered. No pinching out, no extra feed other than what leaches out from the tomato plants.
Other people must have other and probably better advice than this.  :)

[Mrs Ava]

On our old family plot we grew monster pumpkins.  We used to fill a compost heap made out of pallets with stable manure - very fresh and very hot.  Then we would make indents in the hot poo and fill them with bog standard potting compost.  Into this we would plant one plant, water well....and leave it to it!  From 2 plants we harvested one monster huge giant of a pumpkin and about 8 huge ones and the plants themselves took over half our allotment!  They went wild!  Fortunately that plot only had fruit bushes and trees on it so it didn't matter, but it was tretcherous as the plants were so spiney!

[Beer_Belly]

As I stated earlier I didn't grow the pumpkins myself, the old bloke did. All he does is plant them in the ground (where his potatoes were) and water them. We did have a long, hot summer though.