Okay, I'll have to admit that I bought seeds to something I had little idea of what it would turn into. After all, as my hubby puts it, butter, nuts, and squash are all very good. But we've never had butternut squash. How do I know when my squash will be ready? I'm assuming it's not short growing like zucchini but probably longer growing like pumpkin.
Butternut takes anywhere from 80 to 100 days. I harvest when the skins feel good and hard, the color has turned more gold than yellow. I do record when I plant my squash and leave it on the vines for at least 90 days from germination. I live in a warm climate so I have some wiggle room regarding when to harvest. I usually set mine on a table in the shade for three or four days before bringing them into the house. This year I had one squash that started to split after a long rain. I picked it, and dried it over night and then cooked it the next day. Yum.
Thanks for the answer. I'm about 70 days in so I have a month to go. I didn't the skin changed color so it will give me something to look for.
My mom always said to wait until the end attached to the plant started to dry and the skin was hard to dent with your fingernail. They will survive a light frost, too. It is good cooked, mashed and worked into bread dough in place of some liquid. I add a little honey to sweeten it a bit. dooley
Here is a good site on how to store the various winter squashes and pumpkins. I have cured my sugar pumpkins in my food drier, set at the low setting. Looks like you do not have to cure the butternuts. http://urbanext.illinois.edu/gardenersc ... _04_04.cfm
Just read..in an old, old gardening book..it also helps the fruit to ripen if you cut off the growing ends of plants once they've set butternuts: forces the growing energy back into the what's forming, not into new growth of vine. Mine just got "the treatment" this morning, need all the help I can get with a short growing season!
Weeds n' Seeds. Your reading is correct about cutting back the squash vines. I wondered about this very thing last year and then decided to go ahead and try it because I'd learned on this forum it was okay to trim back melon vines. So now, all my squash, watermelons, cantaloupe and sweet potato vines get haircuts. I get space to start some of my fall plantings. There's an added benefit here too. When I prune all those vines back, they are healthy and disease free. So, I chop them up and put them in the compost pile. In our desert heat, they'll be composted and ready to put in the fall garden beds by mid-September. I used to leave all those vines in place until the end of summer just to get another two or three squash. (waste of good water). Anyway, I'd end up burning the vines because they were drying out and looking diseased.
my butterut have done well this year (second year of growing) two things i look for, 1 colour of fruit make sure it has gone from green to golden. 2. test the stems, they get seriously hard, i used a serated blade which can cut through metal and it struggled on the stem. remember leave as much stem as you can. i also lift my squash off the ground, good luck
Hello Miss L-- Not a great deal that I can add to Dan's wise words...but here is a link to some words about butternut squash. http://www.gardenstew.com/about20498.html The butternut squash subject is a ways down the posting. Hope that it is helpfulto you. I really like butternut squash and I like it that if you harvest them correctly and at the right time...they can stay good for ± 6 months.
