Topic: Butternut squashes splitting

[tricia]

My friend has just one butternut plant which has 8 fruit of various sizes on it. Taking a close look at them yesterday I noticed that two of them have several long ragged edge splits in them so I cut them off and now have them curing on my carpet in front of the patio windows. Has anyone else come across squashes spiltting? Each fruit has been tenderly cared for with an empty soft drink bottle as a cushion, so I'm wondering what could have caused them to split. The plant started to form fruit quite early on, whereas my own plant in the ground made a late surge and produced three fruit, one of which is enormous and will certainly not ripen on the vine :).

Tricia

[Mrs Ava]

The split was probably caused by a sudden downpour of rain and the fruit swelling suddenly.  My melon did the same, but as I didn't want to store it, it didn't matter.  It might go mouldy within the split, so if I were you/your friend, I would get them used sooner rather than later.

[OliveOil]

same thing happened to one of mine - it was really big butternut squash too, very disappointing... i've chucked mine as i have more coming up.

I did wonder if it was the dry hot weather followed by wet weather followed by hot weather!