Differences in numbers of winter squash fruits produced per plant

[GrannieAnnie]

I'm curious about this: the butternuts are producing about 5 fruits or more per plant, Sunshine and Honeyboat have a couple per vine, but Crown Prince has but one huge one and Queensland Blue but one medium sized one despite having long vines. Is that the norm?

[GrannieAnnie]

[campanula]

I can get a couple of Crown Prince but by far the most useful, tasty and prolific is Uchiki Kuri - at least 6 per vine.  I think Butternut is bland so don;t grow it anymore.

[pigeonseed]

I've noticed the same - marina di Chioggia, which is a very large fruit, give one or two per ENORMOUS vine and uchiki kuri give several.

[manicscousers]

our uchi kuri are going mental whereas the yellow patty pan have no female flowers on yet  :)

[chriscross1966]

Within the species I think you get a fairly straight line relationship between fruit weight and productive leaf surface area
.... the withiun variety you get a certain number of viable flowers set per plant.... I think Festival is a good one, 8 or so small fruit per plant, but I've seen big maxima species demolish them for cropweight cos they're 3x as big,,,,,,the reason Rutland has no record Atlantic Giant pumpkin is cos you can't grown an AG in that little space.....  ;D

chrisc

[Jeannine]

Hi Grannie, you know I always dread this question as there are so many variables that can affect yeild..the weather eg can be naughty, a female squash flower is only receptive to pollination for about 5 hours a day and she doesn't open up a second time, so if weather is wet and cold and the bees stay home...........she aint getting any!!

Overcrowding is a real downer to production  etc... you can see where I am going with this..

As a rule of thumb, the bigger the fruit the smaller the number so if we compare a Conneticut Field Pumpkin with  2 to a Jack be Little Pumkin at 10-15 you can see.

But you want specs.. so here you are, expected number of fruits for various squash.

Burgess Buttercup 4-5
Mesa Acorn 9
Gold Nugget 10
Sugar Hubbard 4-5
Sweetmeat 2
Waltham Butternut 4-5
Harrier Butternnut 4-5
Honey Bear Acorn 3-4
Jet Acorn 5-7
Bob Bon 4
Delicata 5-7
Sweet Dumpling 8-10
Blue Ballet Hubbard 2
Red Kuri 3-4
Pottimarron 2-3
Sunshine 3-4
Black Forest 4-5
Spaghetti 4-5
Queensland Blue 2

Hope this helps, but please bear in mind weather, location,soil,care, placement  etc can play a big part.

XX Jeannine

[GrannieAnnie]

LOL!  Leave it to Jeannine to have ready productivity stats on all the squashes! ;D

It could be that we had some downpours when the female buds were ready for pollination.
The vines seem healthy and running all over the place but two of the baby squash fruits dried up.
I'll just be content to have one each of the biggest survive.