Hi chadspad. If the soil is very damp it could make them rot. It always pays to keep all, such as squash, pumpkin, marrow and courgettes up off the ground. A tip is to keep them well watered and feed with a high-potash liquid fertiliser about every ten days. If the vines trail too long, it pay to cut them back so that all the energy is put into the squash.
Robin
'You know you are a hard-core gardener if you deadhead flowers in other people's gardens.
To err is human. To blame someone else, is management potential.
I have butternuts producing in the greenhouse- about 6 inch long veg at present. I have a 'cover all bases' approach to gardening by having a greenhouse plant, a spare and one or two in the garden (it is quite early for putting them out here, but i haven't enough space in greenhouse). There tends to be a sharing system going on between me and every slug/weevil/aphid/beastie, so between this system, we seem to somehow end up with crops at the end of the day.....i'm sure that's not how Alan Titchmarsh does it though.....
6" long squash in Aberdeenshire in June! Now that's pretty good going! Min are being hardened off and hope to plant them out next week, depending on this damned weather!
All my squashes are doing OK although not nearly as vigorous as last year unfortunately. Why are there so many males flowers to female ones? My Mum suggested hand-pollinating them for more fruit but the fruit is already there before the flower is (if that makes sense) so its not possible to create more fruit is it? So whats the use in hand-pollinating as read on another thread - is it to set the fruit? Ive had a few squashes that have grown to about sprout size and then go mouldy and drop off - is that from all the rain? I experimented with 2 plants that had fruit on them by nipping the ends off to stop the plant growing anymore and putting the energy into the fruit - all the fruit fell off - wont be doing that anymore
I think I have more female flowers than male now - it seems to be the same with all veggies like that - courgettes, cukes etc. They start off with loads of male then you get mostly female.
The first female ones didn't seem to get pollinated so they went rotten at sprout size. I think the idea of hand pollinating is in case there aren't enough insects around to do it for you, but I'd have thought outdoor veg wouldn't need that - mine certainly have plenty of things buzzing around them even on dull or wet days.
I have a couple of self seeded butternuts growing too; just came up from the compost and are in amongst the sweetcorn. They are just starting to spread out in all directions but haven't had a single flower yet!
Wendy - did you have to let your potimarrons ripen after taking them off the plant before they were edible or were they ripe straight away? I had to put my butternuts on a windowsill indoors to ripen - some took months!
M3 I did leave the poti's on the windowsill for a couple of weeks but only cos I had read on here that squashes needed that. Whenever I knocked on them they sounded hollow - is that how u check?
Have u got as many flowers with fruit as male flowers?
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