This is my butternut squash harvest this year! Minus the 3 I've already given away. 23 squashes - 60 pounds total. I'm looking forward to enjoying lots of squash this winter.
I had 5 plants, I think. So that's 4 or 5 squash per plant each averaging 2 1/2 lbs. The biggest squash are 4-5 lbs and the smallest ones are just over 1 lb. I think my yield is actually lower than what's advertised for this squash. Seems pretty amazing to me!
The variety I grew is the original Waltham Butternut. It was introduced in 1970 by the Massachusetts Agricultural Experiment Station (AES) in Waltham. The squash originated in Stow, Massachusetts, on what is now the Butternut Farm Golf Club. You can read about it's development here.
17 comments:
MMMM, that's a great harvest. I hope I get that many.
WOW! Good "growing"!! I just saw another recipe for butternut squash today on Everyday Italian with Giada...it was a beef and butternut stew...it looked really good! Here's a link! With all of these recipes I'm finding I think I need to grow some butternut squash next year!
http://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/giada-de-laurentiis/beef-and-butternut-squash-stew-recipe/index.html
Incredible harvest. I'm totally awed. Have never got anything like that yield from my plants...
Wow. I got two. Two! From three plants. I'd never grown butternut before and planted them way too close together--all the various curcurbitae relatives ate each other.
So jealous! What are your secrets to a good crop?!
Holy Moses! These are perfect!
Wow, they look great! Might try some next year, too.
I'm so impressed! I have one! One lone butternut squash. I live in WA and we've had an amazing summer so I'm surprised at the low yield. I planted the squash the same time as the zucchini and cucumber and I can hardly keep up with those crops. What's your secret? GREAT job!!
Fantastic! They look tasty! Going to the local farmer's market in western mass to get some goodies...I totally want your baskets by the way.
~Felicia~
Wow Kathy, that is a harvest to make a gardener proud! They truly are productive.
wow! what an impressive harvest - I had a great butternut squash yield also - quick question - how are you going to store them? i've done some research saying you need to cure them. are you going to do that? how? thanks
Wow, congrats. You hit the squash motherlode.
I have no idea what the secret was. Pretty standard growing conditions. Plants were started under lights from mail order seed from Sand Hill Preservation Center. I planted them around April 19 and transplanted them to the garden around May 25. I planted them in soil that has never been gardened before. Its new space that we reclaimed last fall with enormous effort to remove rocks and tree stumps by hand. Early this spring (March), we added a lot of fresh horse manure and compost and turned this in. They were planted in the corner of a bed between tomatoes and asparagus. They grew rampant over everything. Vines are about 20 feet long each spreading out in a different direction. I fertilized once mid-season with Miracle-Gro. Of course, they were well watered this year by rain. That's it. All of my growing secrets.
I think the basket is from Crate and Barrel about 20 years ago.
I did not cure them. I just picked them when they turned pale and the green stripes at the top went away. This may have been a mistake. As I read now, winter squash and pumpkins normally are not harvested until the rind or skin is completely hardened by waiting until just before the frost. After this, they should be cured at a temperature of 80°F to 85°F, with a relative humidity of 80 to 85% for 10 days. These conditions can often be met in the field, but if cool, wet weather is present, they should be brought under shelter and cured with heat by stoves or other artificial means. At the end of the 10-day period, the
humidity should be lowered to about 50 to 70% and the temperature kept between 50°F and 60°F. They keep best in a single layer.
If we get warm weather soon, I'll put them out in the sun a while to cure. But we have cool rainy weather (as usual) now.
I figure I'll keep 5-6 of them. I'll need to look up some recipes, though I could eat my favorite, pureed squash with sweet potatoes, all winter.
Beautiful harvest!
Oh wow that's great!!! I'm gonna try those out next year...so I guess 4 plants should be enough. Did you know that they can keep at room temperature a few months (more if they had a frost)..atleast that's what I read.
Yes, I read too late that I probably should have left them on the vine longer. Though a hard frost is not good for them, so its a bit of a risk to leave them out.
We were able to keep cured ones in our unheated entry way for months and months. Spaghetti squash kept longer, acorn squash kept shorter, and butternut was in between. We ate a spaghetti squash 6 months after we had harvested it, not bad!
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