My mum grew some butternut squash plants of which I have three which don't appear to be doing much at all - probably because I haven't been watering - but the ones she kept are romping away and have fruit.
One squash is now a good size (supermarket size I guess from her description) but neither of us know how you tell it is ripe. I thought it was a bit early to be ready - I was expecting them to be harvested in the autumn - should she just leave this fruit on the plant or harvest now? I am assuming it is the normal orangey colour - she didn't say it wasn't anyway!
I am growing a variety of butternut called cobnut (organic garden catalogue), one plant only, currently bearing 5 fruit. They are small, tomato size at the moment, but I will just crop them in the Autumn as I do with my pumpkins. Isn't ripeness indicated by a hard skin? Although that is only essential for keeping?
I'd like to hear the answer from you squash experts out there too :). On one of my Waltham butternut plants a fruit appeared very early on and is now bigger than most you see in the supermarkets and hasn't grown any more in the past few weeks. There is a smaller one which is growing alongside it which appears to be still growing, but all other embryos have gone yellow and fallen off.
I'm wondering if I should take off the very large one to encourage new fruit to form. What do you think? Will I be able to store it?
Tricia
I leave all mine on the vine until as late as possible, the skins on the butternuts should be yellow, and as hard as possible for good storage, having said that i often bring them inside if a frost is expected, and "cure" them on a windowsill or in the greenhouse.
Tricia I would leave them all on and let them do their own thing! :)
Amanda if your Mum's is yellow, and she would like to use it now, go ahead and pick it! I tend to cure and store mine though as I find this time of the year I have so much other veg, it is nice to have something in the winter to tide us over!
My plants are growing away there are no flowers at all to produce fruit do you think I will get any now this year?
i have four plants which seem healthy and happy but not a fruit on any of them. :'( my lotty neighbour has lots on hers.
Mine have only just started to produce fruit, and they grow at an amazing rate! (Thats why I love growing squash, you can see your efforts grow before your very eyes!)
(They are very hungry and thirsty plants, mine get a bucketful of water every 2 days, and are sitting in a manure filled trench, do they have enough food and water?)
I wouldn't give up on them , they may surprise you yet!
My butternuts have just started producing fruit, so I know how you feel. It has seemed like ages before anything happened despite lots of foliage. My other squash are going great guns and I thought my butternuts were not going to bother, but this week the fruit has started appearing. :) busy_lizzie
Doris is right, leave them on the vine until the vines die back so they get the hard outer skin. Good for storage then. I've been watering mine just about every day and they all have a load of manure underneath. My northern bush that was all male has just produced a female, so don't give up hope yet!
Tricia, that happened to me last year. I got a nice big butternut and then three smaller ones. If you want to stop any more growing after a few have set, you can plant the end of the vine in the ground and more roots will grow. I just leave them myself. I still get enough squash without the bother. ;D
I don't know anything about growing them myself, but I was given three beautiful butternut squash yesterday by one of the lottie-pros. And we had one cooked up in a stir-fry for lunch. It was delicious!
Not a hard outer skin but delicious for now!
He has about three plots so if he has three large ones to give away to beginners like us, I guess he's picking his already.
As well as water squashes need food such as liquid seaweed or diluted manure weekly. ;D
A pic of my first butternut. I didn't give it any special attention, just planted it in a bed of manure and watered it regularly. :) busy_lizzie
beautiful. arnt they sweet. one of my four plants which had no fruit on three days ago now has five fruit on it ::). dinky little things.
And a picture of my cobnut, which is a type of butternut as I mentioned earlier.
HI all ,
I was given some butternut squash seeds from a very kind A4A member.
Mine arent showing any sign of squashes - although I have a few yellow flowers on them.
After lookin at Busy lizzie's - i'm thinking should mine be tied up? as they are crawling over the ground.????
Many thanks :)
Hi, Mine took ages to get any fruit on, so I am sure there is still time. I have mine on a frame to save space, otherwise they do cover a lot of ground. busy-lizzie
Mine are just sprawling everywhere without a single flower let alone a squash. Am just keeping my fingers crossed that at least one of the four plants will produce something :-\
My butternut have a lot of male flowers but no sign of the female flowers yet. I am watering every day and they were planted in manure. I guess I just have to be patient .....
We ate our first butternut squash tonight and it was fabulous mmmmmmmmm
It grew alarmingly quick then stopped, 2 smaller fruit on the same plant died off so we decided to eat now rather than losing the biggest of them.
Was lovely steamed with some fab stuffed courgettes (which were huge!)
Do you not leave the skins to harden like pumpkins?
Thanks all for the replies on BNS. I spoke to my mum yesterday and she's going to leave it on the plant for a while but keep an eye on it - don't want to loose it now! Haven't checked mine for a few days........ :-\
You normally leave the skins to harden but they can be eaten at any time. Mine got off to a slow start, and haven't produced a female flower yet.
Although be careful about leaving them to harden in a warm sunlit place - ours were late last year so when it started to get really damp and cold they were still not completely ripe - so we put them in our greenhouse to ripen off and harden the skins off for storage - only they kept on getting riper and riper and riper until - they were too ripe! They did what all fruit does eventually and started to rot - make sure you get them somewhere cool and dark once they are ready - we lost about 10 butternuts last year like that!!
Sorry to be a bit dense but does that mean that I can take the fruits off my squash now that are big enough and ripen them, allowing some of the smaller fruits to grow bigger. I have 3 monsters which are great but I don't want them bigger (only 2 of us!).
Thanks!
If you don't want to eat them now, they're probably best left on the plant.