Winter squash - how can I get more fruit per vine?

[TrixC]

I am growing winter squash for the second time this year. I have a smallish garden so only have room for three plants. I thought I would try three different varieties to see which works best and have chosen Bon Bon, Marina di Chioggia and Black Futsu. They are big healthy vines but the issue I've had both this year and last year is that the plants form one fruit and then stop - after that they produce lots of male flowers but any female flowers simply drop off.

I know from growing courgettes and summer squash that if you keep picking the plants keep producing, but I've read that you're not supposed to harvest winter squash until the very end of the season once the foliage starts to die back. However, as an experiment I removed the single fruit from one of my three plants. That was a week ago and the plant has burst back into life and is now creating new female flowers. I'm now wondering if I should remove the fruits from the other plants too, in the hope of getting them to produce more? Or is there something else I should be doing? They are planted in a raised bed that was enriched with worm compost and I feed them once a week with a high potash feed. The soil does tend to dry out and I wonder if I should have been watering more?

[Kristen]

I doubt that a new fruit, produced now, will have time to fully develop?

I only allow one fruit per "vine", and I nip out the growing point 2 or 3 leaves further along, otherwise there generally isn't enough ability to get water and nutrients to the fruit to fatten it up. However, my plants tend to have 3 or 4 "vines" on each plant, so I then get one fruit per "vine".

Dunno if this is a good idea, or not, but I plant two plants at each location. They produce, say, 6 - 8 vines between and spread out in a star pattern I reckon they have enough room to themselves. I then cannot get another neighbouring plant particularly close ... but that might be a means of doubling your vines & crop in future years.

[sparrow100]

I'd love to know more about this too.

I read that pinching out the main vine after it gets to 4-5ft long encourages more sideshoots which will bear more fruit. Slugs did it for me (how nice!) on one of my plants and I have 2 rouge vif squashes instead of just none.

Female flowers dropping off after they have opened is usually poor pollination. Falling off before they have opened (which is what I have) can be caused by heat - high temperatures (what we had in July) might have caused the plant to abort the fruits early. They might start setting some late fruit now the temperatures have calmed down. My butternuts are suddenly chucking out female flowers.

I've also found slugs find the flowers irresistable and this year sometimes bagging them is the only way to stop the slimeys from destroying both male and female flowers before pollination can happen. Little *$%&*!!

[TrixC]

I doubt that a new fruit, produced now, will have time to fully develop?

I only allow one fruit per "vine", and I nip out the growing point 2 or 3 leaves further along, otherwise there generally isn't enough ability to get water and nutrients to the fruit to fatten it up. However, my plants tend to have 3 or 4 "vines" on each plant, so I then get one fruit per "vine".

Dunno if this is a good idea, or not, but I plant two plants at each location. They produce, say, 6 - 8 vines between and spread out in a star pattern I reckon they have enough room to themselves. I then cannot get another neighbouring plant particularly close ... but that might be a means of doubling your vines & crop in future years.

That's interesting, I've found that early on my plants tend to produce side shoots, but once the single fruit has set the side shoots 'give up' and the growth is concentrated in a single long vine. I've read about pinching out the growing tips but can't quite bring myself to do it when there are no side shoots appearing.

[sparrow100]

Just seen Kristen's reply - I reckon if they set and if we keep having an Indian summer, there is just about time to get some of the smaller fruits to grow big enough to ripen indoors, but possibly not the bigguns like marina. I checked my diary and my black futsus for seed were pollinated at the end of July, early August and they are now starting to turn dark green/black.

Don't know where you are in London, but down here the first frosts are usually early/mid November.

[TrixC]

I'd love to know more about this too.

I read that pinching out the main vine after it gets to 4-5ft long encourages more sideshoots which will bear more fruit. Slugs did it for me (how nice!) on one of my plants and I have 2 rouge vif squashes instead of just none.

Female flowers dropping off after they have opened is usually poor pollination. Falling off before they have opened (which is what I have) can be caused by heat - high temperatures (what we had in July) might have caused the plant to abort the fruits early. They might start setting some late fruit now the temperatures have calmed down. My butternuts are suddenly chucking out female flowers.

I've also found slugs find the flowers irresistable and this year sometimes bagging them is the only way to stop the slimeys from destroying both male and female flowers before pollination can happen. Little *$%&*!!

One of my vines produced a bunch of female flowers right after the first fruit set and to increase the chance they would 'take' I hand pollinated them with a brush - even though the bumblebees in my garden usually love the squash blossoms. But the small fruits just dropped off. Once the single fruit reaches a decent size any additional female flowers seem to abort virtually as soon as they form - way before the blossoms open.

[TrixC]

I'm in North London, so yeah, mid-November is about right for first frosts. I began vegetable gardening in the north of New Zealand which is frost-free, so I'm often a bit too optimistic about the English climate

[daviddevantnhisspiritwife]

I need to work on this subject too. Aside from my Winter Festival (5) the others seem to have only yielded one a piece and a couple have 2 fruits.

I are clearly doing something wrong.

I will be following this advice next year, though, might pinch a couple out now to see what happens.

Edit: I did have a Galeux D'Eysines that got to the size of a football and then went squishy (a google search revealed this is not uncommon on this variety - :\ ) and also a promising looking Marina Di Chioggia that got almost as big and gave up. Still, got enough looking good to see us through the winter

[Thelma Sanders]

I always make a hole and fork a lot of chicken manure pellets or manure into the bottom before back-filling and planting them - as they are such greedy plants, also use tomato fertiliser later when they're flowering.
Then I just leave them to get on with it

[Two_Sheds]

I reckon ... there is just about time to get some of the smaller fruits to grow big enough to ripen

Nope, because it's not simply down to warmth, what's most important is plenty of good quality daylight & lots of hours of it, and day length is shortening quickly now

[Thelma Sanders]

I reckon ... there is just about time to get some of the smaller fruits to grow big enough to ripen

There's only one way to find out

[sparrow100]

I'm with Thelma, there's no harm in seeing what happens. I've got 2 little butternuts just about to open here.

[Kristen]

there's no harm in seeing what happens

Personally I hate failure ... although until I've tried something I'm unsure if it will fail, or not! but if overwhelming evidence is against then I prefer not to add my name to the list of failures! and I choose to do something different instead. I resent the waste of my time more than anything, there are only so many hours until I die ... so for me if it isn't going to make it I would rip it out and plant something else - if its too late for a crop I'd switch to a green manure (which it will be too late to sow in, say, November when it is eventually clear if they've made it ... or not)

[Kristen]

Sorry, that doesn't read like I intended it to, the point of my post was to draw a comparison between myself (and any others like me, if they exist?!) and folk that are prepared to try an experiment where there is a fairly high chance of failure - the "learn from mistakes" approach. I much prefer to learn from other peoples mistakes! I certainly didn't mean to imply that having a go is in some way wrong ... just not what I would choose to do.