Allotment Gardening Advice Help Chat
Growing => Grow Your Own => Topic started by: Nettles on September 28, 2009, 14:04
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Due to an extended stay away from home in May my butternut squash plants went in late this year. Everyone else's have turned yellow and most have been harvested but although I have several growing they are still very green.
As the [night time] temperature is starting to drop, should I pick them now and if so, will they continue to ripen at home or should I leave them on the plant and perhaps wrap them in fleece to protect from frosts and colder weather?
Advice would be most welcome.
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Hi
I'm no expert but I would suggesest that Squash plants hate cold and so will start to wither and die. I wouldn't think fleecing will help? Thats a lot of vines to cover.
If the fruit are of a good size, pick them and let them cure on a sunny window.
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where do you live, nettles? Here in West London it's still very mild at night and the days are warm and sunny so my BNS are still ripening. As long as you protect them from frost they should continue to ripen and the rinds harden.
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I'm in the NE and mine went in late. Should be ok till the 1st frosts and you can cover at night with fleece. cut the plants back so the energy goes into the fruit
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First frosts threatened for East Anglia next week!!!
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My plants were looking decidedly sorry for themselves so I have taken my BNS off (I have six which I am pleased with) and they are ripening, hopefully, on the windowsill at home. I was told that when cutting them off leave the stem on as this helps with the ripening process.
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It's a file line this one.
I'm with sadgit cut back any growing tips so that the plant can concentrate on fruit development. I'm on Essex/London border close to the Thames and the weather has been very mild down here. My BNS will probably stay in this weekend but I'm now on frost watch.
Tuesday I had the first condensation on the car windows in the morning. The first potential frosts are a couple of weeks away from us I recon. I’m thinking about Cod fishing soon, that is usually a sign that the weather is breaking.
When you do harvest make sure to take plenty of stem with the fruit and use a good, strong, sharp knife to make a clean cut.
Mine have been lovely this year.
http://growingyourownveg.blogspot.com/2009/09/happy-little-squashes.html
Apparently any left over green fruit that are not going to ripen in time can be used for chutney.
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loving your sunflower seeds macro shot...
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I'm growing them for the first year.
I read to let them take the first mild frost, then harvest, is that advice not "safe" then?
Interesting about taking some vine with them when harvesting. Can I take half a dozen metres of vine, and leave that on for a few weeks before timing and [final] storing for the Winter?
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Hi Kristen
I wouldn't risk a frost at all with my squashes. If you hear of a drop in temperatures you can leave your squashes on the vine but I would cover them with fleece. Any continuing low temps or a frost can damage your squashes. You dont need to take long amounts of vine. When the squashes are ready cut from the vine but leave a few inches of the vine attached to the squash. With pumpkins try to leave a *t bar* handle on the pumpkin but dont hold the pumpkins or squashes by the handle you have created. Once harvested if possible allow the squashes to spend about a week to 10 days in the sun...but again if it turns cold or wet for days bring them indoors. This process is called curing and it hardens the skin. Once this has been done you can bring them inside the house perhaps to an unheated spare room so long is its cool and dry for its final storage.
Jazz!!
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Marvellous! Thanks for that, could have lost the whole of my first-ever crop.
"Once harvested if possible allow the squashes to spend about a week to 10 days in the sun...but again if it turns cold or wet for days bring them indoors"
Put them on racks in the conservatory? or would they be better off in the sun and wind outside, but bought in on cold nights?
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Yes you can use the conservatory. :)
Jazz
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Hope nobody minds me hi-jacking this thread but my BNS seem to rot away each time one gets started - the photo below shows a small BNS (scale - this baby grower is about thumb-length) as discovered about two weeks ago. Subsequent photos show what happened to it.
Here's the starter.
Cute, isn't he?
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Right, here's the same, not so cute, a few days later:
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And finally, a couple of days ago - not cute in any sense of the word!
Can anyone tell me what's going on?
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i would say that it didn't get pollinated but even if it had done chances are it would not have ripened before the first frost.
i had quite a good crop this year
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Deffo not poliinated :(...it seems that the only ones I got were hand pollinated, although the acorn squash and the pumpkins seemed to manage it by themselves.
It makes me wonder if buternuts are worth all the trouble :(
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And finally, a couple of days ago - not cute in any sense of the word!
Can anyone tell me what's going on?
i think its too cold for it now to grow into a full squash ,i had just harvest 20 yellow bns last weekend,but their was still new bns growing,but they looked like yours in photos,,too cold at night for them
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I took all the small fruit off my plants a few weeks ago so they could concentrate on the ones that looked like they would make maturity.
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I tend to take the flowers off the end before the they start to rot and infect the squash , it does happen to the fertilised fruit as well.
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Deffo not poliinated :(...it seems that the only ones I got were hand pollinated, although the acorn squash and the pumpkins seemed to manage it by themselves.
It makes me wonder if buternuts are worth all the trouble :(
they are definately worth it if you have the room, i dont do anything to mine, just plant them in a good heap of manure and water well to start with, then i leave them alone
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I had 3 Harrier butternuts (the bushy ones) in an area 4ft x 7ft....dug holes filled with compost and chcken manure pellets and managed to grow 6 small (1kg ish) butternuts.Maybe Harrier are meant to be a lot smaller, but, no. of fruit wise.... I did better from just one Thelma Sanders acorn squash. I fed them all regularly with tomato fertilizer once they started to fruit.......... :(
So do you lot who have good butternuts do any more to get your good harvests.
Is it the variety...what do you think?
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I'll give them one more try next year - do most people on here plant them outside or ion the greenhouse? I did mine in the greenhouse and maybe that's why they didn't pollinate?
Next season I'll try outdoors and also try and hand pollinate as well.
If that doesn't work, that's it for BNS, I'll buy it from Sainsburys! :D
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I'd always hand pollinate squash, definitely from another plant and preferably from a different variety.... this is my harvest this year:
(http://i6.photobucket.com/albums/y228/chriscross1966/27092009221.jpg)
At least one of those pumpkins father was a gherkin :blink: Most of the butternuts are Hunter (free BBC seed) pollinated with Festivals for the most part (the yellow/green acorn type). The green/black buttercups are Bon-Bon... fine on my allotment but way too invasive for all but the biggest garden... the orange hubbard is uchiki kuri, dunno tth pumpkin variety... there's a pumpkin and three festivals missing as already harvested a few weeks before the main harvest... there's another two Hunters that only set a couple of weeks ago on a plant that had ripened its other fruit... it's fleeced against the weather ATM but I'm hoping we get a couple of decent weeks yet before it gets too grim....
chrisc
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I'll give them one more try next year - do most people on here plant them outside or ion the greenhouse? I did mine in the greenhouse and maybe that's why they didn't pollinate?
Next season I'll try outdoors and also try and hand pollinate as well.
If that doesn't work, that's it for BNS, I'll buy it from Sainsburys! :D
i always plant outside and like i said before i never hand polinate, i just let then get on with it.
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i would say that it didn't get pollinated but even if it had done chances are it would not have ripened before the first frost.
Ok - now I'm puzzled, and hope this question doesn't sound too dim! If it wasn't pollinated, how come it came to form fruit at all, as seen in the pics? :blink:
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All the female flowers start with a small fruit behind them, and sometimes they do seem as if they are going to grow bigger, but if they haven't been fully pollinated they just rot of :(
Courgettes, cucumbers, marrows, squash and pumpkin all have the baby fruits behind the female flowers and behave in the same way.
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i would say that it didn't get pollinated but even if it had done chances are it would not have ripened before the first frost.
Ok - now I'm puzzled, and hope this question doesn't sound too dim! If it wasn't pollinated, how come it came to form fruit at all, as seen in the pics? :blink:
all the female flowers have a fruit behind them but they have to be pollinated for them to continue growing and mature
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Errm...I thought that i'd already said that :unsure: :)
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Errm...I thought that i'd already said that :unsure: :)
you did, sorry, was only half reading the replies, trying to do too many things at one!!