Day: November 20, 2020

Growing Butternut Squash

Are you thinking about growing butternut squash at the allotment or the garden? Here we will provide you with all the tips and advice to growing these successfully and gaining great crops and harvests. You will be eating some delicious meals with these or your friends and family will be impressed when you give them a butternut squash. If grown right you could get between 5 and 15 butternut squash per plant.

Butternut squash does not look like it’s sister squashes pumpkins. The shape of the the butternut squash is not round and the skin on them is a creamy yellow colour. Growing these butternut squash with children and grandchildren can be great fun.

Allotment and Kitchen Garden Book

Are you starting an allotment or planning on growing your own fruit, vegetables, herbs, and flowers in a kitchen garden? If so we highly recommend the book Allotment Month By Month. This does exactly what it does on the cover to help you with what you should be doing in the allotment and kitchen garden each month. Below you can see the link for Amazon where you can purchase the book directly. This book is extremely popular with all allotment holders as you will read in the reviews:-

You can check out all the allotment and kitchen garden books we recommend here.

Sowing, Planting and Harvesting Butternut Squash

Knowing when to sow, plant and harvest your butternut squash is important. It can take around 120 days from sowing the butternut squash seed to harvesting the butternut squash.

Purchase Butternut Squash Seeds

Are you wanting to purchase butternut squash seeds to grow in your allotment and garden? Here you can click the link and it will take you straight to Amazon where you can buy safe and securely.

How to sow butternut squash.

When sowing butternut squash seeds you are best sowing these indoors or in a greenhouse. The reason for this is that they need the warmth to help them germinate. If you are planning on sowing outdoors you will need to wait till the soil warms up – this is using valuable growing time. Like I mentioned above it takes around 120 days for the butternut squash to be fully grown ready to harvest. So the quicker you start them growing the longer you have before the cold comes.

When it comes to sowing butternut squash in the greenhouse, it is pretty easy. The best way to do it and a hassle-free way are to plant one squash seed in a medium-sized plant pot. The reason for this is if you plant them into seed trays you will only have to transplant them to grow them bigger. IF you are growing them straight in the plant pots you don’t need to touch them until you move them outdoors. Once you have planted your seeds you can cover the pots with some cling film to keep the moisture in and to help the soil keep warm which will germinate the butternut squash seeds.

How to plant Butternut Squash

When your squash plants have germinated and are of a great size and any chance of frost has passed you can now plant them outdoors. Do not plant them outdoors if the chance of frost is still around as this will kill the plants off.

When planting your squash outdoors you need a big area to grow them as the vines can reach from between 15ft to 20ft. Your other option is to grow them up a frame so they don’t take up as much space on the ground.

To plant your butternut squash dig a hole a spade deep. Add some compost, well rotted manure and some fertilizer to the hole. Now you can plant your butternut squash in the hole. Fill in the rest of the hole with the remaining soil.

How to look after your squash plants

Looking after your butternut squash is vital to getting great results and fantastic harvest from the vines on the butternut squash plants.

Feeding your squash is vital for bumper crops. When you start to see the squash set and start to swell feed them with a high potash liquid fertilizer. Do this every ten days. This will certainly help give them a great crop.

Weeding is the next important thing that needs doing. If you notice any weeds growing around the squash plants remove them immediately – do not let the weeds grow as they can take all the nutrients and water from the soil that the butternut squash plant needs to grow. Weeding the butternut squash should ideally be done by hand as you do not want to damage the roots growing on the plant, these are not very deep on the plant so can easily be damaged with a hoe.

The most important thing for the butternut squash growing is watering the plant. It is not a simple case of watering the squash plant. When watering the butternut squash plant you need to be doing this around 3-4 times a week especially in hot weather. It is good to keep the soil damp. You need to be careful that you don’t water the stem of the plant or the leaves. Watering the stem could cause it to rot and the butternut squash plant could snap and die. Do not get water on the leaves as this can cause the powdery mildew that you see on plants. The best way to water butternut squash plants is to sink a plant pot with holes in at the side of the plant and water into that. This way the water will go straight to the roots and not to the stem or on the leaves.

How to harvest butternut squash

Knowing when to harvest your butternut squash is important as picking it too early can be bad and if you leave it too long you may expose it to frost. Here we will talk about when the best time is to harvest your butternut squash.

The best time to pick your butternut squash is when the rind on the butternut squash has gone hard and it will be a nice creamy yellow. You need to make sure you harvest the butternut squash before the first frost as the frost can damage the butternut squash and make it rot which you do not want after you have spent so long growing them on the allotment and garden so keep an eye on the temperatures in your area.

When harvesting your butternut squash you need to leave some of the stalk on the plant as this will let you store it for longer. That is the first bit that starts to rot on the squash.

For more information on harvesting butternut squash you can check it out here.