6 Deadly Mistakes You Can’t Afford When Growing Squash

How are your squash plants doing? Isn’t it incredible how fast they grow? But they do take 80 to 100 days to fruit, and this is a very dangerous time for them, your backyard garden, and your harvest. They look so strong and vigorous that many amateur gardeners make mistakes, mainly due to a sense of security. Then, come midsummer, disappointment sets in… What a waste of time, labor and space…

If you don’t want to spoil all your efforts growing squash, here are 6 mistakes you must absolutely avoid. Let’s dive in!

Mistake Nr 1: Allowing Pests to Ruin Your Squash Plants

Squash plants are large and leafy, and it’s hard to spot pests under those massive leaves. One especially is a real nightmare: squash vine borer, also known as Melittiacucurbitae by scientists. It looks pretty innocuous as an adult, like a little fly, orangish with dark leaves.

But it has a horrible “vice”…. It lays eggs under the foliage of your squash plants, and then the larvae (which are biggish and white) bore into the vine and they eat it from inside. So, what can you do?

• First of all, prevent the squash vine borer from reaching your squash plant. Cover it with an insect net while it grows, but remove it when it flowers, so bees can pollinate it.
• You can also spray your squash plants with kaolin clay; it’s a natural substance, which you mix with water in powder form, and it makes the leaves very inhospitable for the vine borer to lay eggs on, and it also keeps enemy number two at bay, cucumber beetle, or Diabroticaundecimpunctata. But make sure you apply it under the leaves too.

Also, check after rainfalls, because they can wash it away.

• Another method is to use a decoy, like a catch crop, but with squash plants. Basically, you sacrifice a few that you plant around your main bed, and the vine borer will find those first and stop there.

But how about if the squash vine borer makes it through your defenses? First of all, identify where it has hidden – well, after a while it doesn’t hide too well, because you will literally see “caves” inside your squash vines… so…

• Layer the vine further down… Look at where the vine comes from, and, say a foot (30 cm) down towards the end, just bury part of it in shallow soil. It will grow new roots and become “independent”. This way, the squash vine borer will not stop it from getting water and nutrients!

An alternative is to choose a squash vine borer resistant variety, like ‘Cocozzella di Napoli’. Don’t worry, these are cultivars and hybrids, not OGMs!

Mistake Nr 2 : Don’t Starve Your Squash, or It Will Starve You!

Just think how much energy squash plants need to grow those long and thick vines, huge leaves and heavy fruits! You got the point: you need to feed them.

First of all, give them a slow-release, balanced fertilizer when you plant them. A good 2 to 4 inches (5.0 to 10 cm) of compost around the seedling will be fine – but not enough! Within a month, they’ll have “slurped it all up”…

So, starting 3 to 4 weeks from transplanting, switch to a fast-release liquid fertilizer with NPK 10-10-10 or 16-16-16. The trick here is to feed your squash vines often, so every two weeks till the end of harvest.

Mistake Nr 3 : Not Staggering Your Squash Planting

You can transplant squash seedlings till late in the season, well into the month of July! And this has two great advantages for you and your harvest:

• It gives you a longer harvest season.
• By July, the squash vine borer has stopped laying eggs, so you don’t risk a bad harvest with later plants; and the cucumber beetle too is less troublesome in summer.

Next…

Mistake Nr 4 : Not Pollinating Your Squash Flowers

I can hear you say, “Do I need to pollinate squash flowers myself?” Yes you do! Well, not always… If there are lots of bees and other pollinators around, they’ll do the job for you (so, grow flowers to attract them!) However…

If you see that the flowers wilt away and the petioles go yellow instead of growing, they have not been pollinated, and you will have to do it yourself. How?

• Identify male and female flowers. Male ones have a thin petiole (and you can eat them), while female ones have a thick one, like a miniature squash – easy!
• Take a cotton bud, like those you use to clean your ears.
• Rub it inside the male flower, to collect the pollen.
• Then rub it inside the female flower, in the center, at the top of the pistil (the stigma, technically).

Job done, and you one male flower can pollinate many female ones, it’s not like a dating agency job…

An alternative is to snap off a male flower, open it and rub it inside a female one. Then eat it; it won’t look as good on your plate, but it would be a waste.

Mistake Nr 5 : Never Allow a Single Squash Fruit to Ripen!

You need to understand the behavior of squash vines if you want a big and long harvest. We actually don’t eat their fruits when they are fully ripe, do we? In fact, you can eat them very young as well, but not when they get soft (they also turn sour then…)

Why is it? Because as soon as a single squash fruit ripens, the plant stops producing other flowers and fruits. It basically thinks, “Job done, I have a baby and I’ll look after it now!” Well, in technical terms it switches to the second part of the reproductive phase, but you got the point.

So, when is the best time to harvest your squashes? As soon as the flower has fallen off.

Go round every day and collect all the squash fruits that don’t have a flower on them – even if you don’t eat them; give them to your neighbor in case…

The good news is that this only applies to summer squash, so you can keep warm indoors in winter…

Mistake Nr 6: Not Removing Sick Squash Leaves

I know, we all love those massive leaves on our squash vines, but as soon as you see any disease, or if they are dying back, cut them off! This will prevent infections from spreading.

There’s another thing, while we are on the topic. Cut some big old leaves under where the vine is flowering and fruiting, not above. This will improve air flow and help you prevent diseases and fungi.

666: The Number of the Beast!

These are the 6 deadly mistakes you cannot afford when growing your squash. Avoid them and you will get a bumper crop, because this plant is very generous, as long as you do your job.