Butternut squash is a tasty organery treat that keeps long after your organery quits producing. It is a winter squash, presumably because of its firm nature and longer tendency for storage. You'll find the size of the butternut squash to be in the middle of 8 inches and a foot long. Some of them may weigh as much as three pounds. The face is regularly a light tan and the interior is the scrumptious orange that makes it a rival for pumpkin in cooking.
How to Grow
If you're a seed saver, you'll want to keep the butternut squash away from zucchini or other squash as they can cross-pollinate. It won't hurt the crop you have this year but you may have some intelligent squash next year. There is a gardening wives tale that if you plant cucumbers next to squash you'll end up with bizarre seeing veggies, which are inedible, that's not true. They don't cross-pollinate. It's like mating a wolf with a house cat, it just won't happen.
When to Plant
You'll need to plant the butternut squash in hills after the opportunity of frost passes. Plant the seeds in hills by placing 4 seeds per hill spaced practically 4 inches apart and ½ to 1 inch deep. Space the hills four to six feet apart.
Soil and Fertilizations
Butternut squash likes to eat and loose soil with lots of organic matter. Make a composition of compost and manure. Turn into your soil before you plant the butternut squash. You may need to fertilize consistently throughout the season. You can do this by development a fish or manure tea.
Watering
Butternut squash will lose its fruit if you allow the plant to dry. However, overwatering is just as bad since it causes mold and fungus to charge the plant. If you have a drip irrigation system, that works quite well. Check the soil for dryness. Remember the large leaves of the plant expose it to more evaporation.
Types of Pest /Disease and stoppage or Control
You're not the only one that looks transmit to your squash. There are bugs and pests that also eagerly await not just the fruit but the leaves and vines also. Squash bugs, striped cucumber beetles and squash vine borers are the main pests of butternut squash.
Squash bugs are easy to recognize because they are brownish and have a shield shape. As a child, you may have called them stinkbugs since they smell when you squish them. You can control the limited pests with diatomaceous earth, neem oil and sabodilla. You can also use companion planting to deter the pests. Nasturtium, corn and marigolds work quite well. Squash bugs and beetles like shelter and hide in mulch. Use newspapers for mulch and keep floating row covers over the ground to deter all three insects.
Aphids also play a role in carrying disease to the squash even though they don't de facto hurt the squash otherwise. Use lady beetles to control aphids. Trichopoda pennipes is a parasitic fly whose young feed on the squash bug. Some types of wasps feed on the eggs.
Bacterial wilt occurs when you have cucumber beetles so if you control the beetles you've conquered that disease. You'll sell out the inherent for black rot, downy mildew and gummy stem blight by a drip watering principles rather than watering from overhead. Using disease resistant varieties of butternut squash also eliminates many separate diseases.
Growing Butternut Squash