Squash & pumpkin

These will trail.
They are hungry plants, one planting method is to dig out a 2' cube, backfill with well rotted manure, then make a soil/compost 6" cube top centre to pop your plant in. I just treat it as my main manuring crop and overdo the manure.
Next to each plant you should plant a bottomless and capless 2L lemonade bottle cap end down and half in the soil. Finish by putting a safety capped cane in the ground through the cap hole. Direct to root watering next to the plant and locatable through the leaves without putting your eye out.
I use carpet and woven plastic to suppress weeds as you cannot hoe in squash plots.
Putting some stepping "stones" in helps also, trailing stems are easy to crush if you have to go into your squash plot. Train them away from your stepping places.
When it is hot and dry water your squash, then water them again, did I say water them. I had a couple crack last year cos of the bad sun/rain/sun sequence.
Yield, check my blog, but well treated and with good luck expect five per plant.
You don't say where you are, plot or home, but watch out for walking pumpkins, they're orange, they're tempting, they're gone. Especially after the first frost kills the leaves. Remember to cure them in sunlight before storing and check frequently. they really hum when rotting.

Hello IfcJohn, and welcome to the Vine. I can't see whereabouts in the country you are. You can add that in your personal profile if you wish.
Squash are not hardy and will not tolerate frost so planting out could be risky. In my experience If they have been raised in warm conditions they are also fikey to harden off - they don't even want to feel a breeze blowing on their leaves. When I put them out to start with I put some fleece over them even during the day and harden them off very gradually. Having said all that I have some living outside now - I planted them ridiculously early - but they are well covered with fleece at night, so maybe I will get away with it.
They grow quite big and sprawl across the ground, maybe about 8', but I believe some people's get bigger. You can grow them "up" but you need pretty stout supports. I got 3 or 4 squash from each plant . Hope this helps.

Could I just ask a question about Butternut squash please? I had three healthy plants with their second true leaves just developing, one keeled over and died and the other 2 started to yellow and look poorly. I gave one a little tug yesterday and it came right out of the soil with only one bit of rather poor root attached - what caused this and how can I stop it happening again? I now have no butternut squash plants I think I have a couple of seeds left but am I now too late to sow them?

only sowed my squash last week shirl. I am sure that I read in the monty dom book not to plant till mid april. I believe most cvs need 3 to 4 months of warm weather to mature.

Might have been kept too wet Shirl - They don't like it and are prone to rotting off. Have another go - You're not too late.