butternut squash?

[REDMAN]

currentyly have 10 little plants in the greenhouse, and just wondering how many squash I might get from each one? Have never grown them before.. are they going to be huge plants? I was thinking of putting them in a kind of hotbed thing.. lots of manure with some soil on top? any suggestions or advice gratefully appreciated!

[REDMAN]

[Curryandchips]

How many fruit? Pick a number  :D Seriously though you could get anything from nil to perhaps a dozen of each plant. Estimate for perhaps 4 to 6 ... any more is then a bonus. As for space, well they will sprawl as far as you let them. I turn mine back towards themselves so they don't take over the whole allotment. They don't need a hotbed, but they will need plenty of water. If space is limited, you may consider running them up a sturdy trellis.

Good luck, winter squash is a real delight.

[supersprout]

Hi redman, it all sounds perfect (esp. the hotbed/manure bit). If you plant out the squash on little hillock of compost on the manure, it will decrease the risk of stem rot, as will sinking a bottomless plastic bottle top-down into the planting hole and watering into that. More at http://www.allotments4all.co.uk/joomla/component/option,com_smf/Itemid,57/topic,8300.0
Trad. allow 1m x 1m for trailing squash, as curry says you can peg the stem so the plant goes where you want it. There's also a recent thread on 'Growing squash upwards' if you are short of space at http://www.allotments4all.co.uk/joomla/component/option,com_smf/Itemid,57/topic,18271.0.
How well they crop is down to you and M. Nature, but they will store all winter, at least one of the peeps on this forum is still feeding her family from last year's squash. You'll find advice on storing squash on several threads.
If you do a search on the button at the top of the page on 'butternut squash' there are FIVE pages, it's a great favourite :o :o. Good luck! :D

[bellebouche]

Last year, 9x plants planted in 3x 1m circular 'troughs' yielded two wheelbarrows worth of fruits. It was a spectacular harvest. We still have 9x 1 litre bottles of butternut soups left from what I had made to see us through the winter.

Ours cropped prolifically, early fruits taken needed just a little time to mature off the plant and were no different in quality to the much larger fruits left on to giant-like proportions. We did find that on some plants early harvesting of medium sized fruits rejuvenated the whole plant and brought on a new rash of flowering and fruit set.

Our only problem... watering. Irregular watering meant that some fruit split.

Fruits that we'd tried to store from late on in the year didn't last well... all succumbed to menacing brown spots on the surface that slowly consumed the hard flesh underneath.... resulting in a bit of waste. This year I'll cut earlier and mature in the sun for much longer off the plant.

[REDMAN]

thanks for all the advice.. only problem now is that is looks like I wont have room to grow anything else!