Topic: Squashes - do I remove leaves now?

[Karen Atkinson]

Am I supposed to be removing the leaves of my various squash plants to let the sun (hahaha) at them to ripen?

[Jeannine]

No, no need mine just ramble XX Jeannine

[Karen Atkinson]

thanks tho we live in NE England..not much sun here at the moment

[Jeannine]

I lived in Yorkshire for several years and grew squash there. Here I am surrounded by feilds of it, it is planted and never pruned. Some folks do but I never have unless it was to remove the leader.

XX Jeannine

[gavinjconway]

No need to prune the leaves. Just leave them to find the sun.... what little we have at the mo in the NW.. Mine on my roof are about done now so all the leaves have almost died off and leaveing the squashes open to the sun rain!!

[Aden Roller]

I'm in the south and the sun's missing here too.

My plants need another month of summer (as we've hardly had any this year) in order to produce enough ripe fruit.  :(

The leaves are staying put for now.... every one of them needed to push some energy into those fruit.
In a couple of weeks time I will chop off all the fruit that looks too small to ripen into anything useful.

[tricia]

The leaves on the Australian Butter squash are wilting for some unknown reason - but two good sized fruit ripening up nicely. All other varieties growing well in the cool weather, but not many fruit this year. Butternuts are doing better although most of the fruit are still quite small.

Hey ho! maybe September will give us some late warmth  :).

Tricia