Butternut squash

[annacruachan]

There's where I went wrong! I pinched off the growing points of my two plants before checking to see if I had any female flowers! Dunce! However, there were, luckily, two left on one plant. The smaller one is hiding behind its sister.

I don't know if I should leave these until they go hard and creamy in colour, never having grown them before. Saving seed is not particularly important since I have loads from a Tesco squash last year. Any advice gratefully received.

[Kio]

I have winter butternut squash growing, 2 plants are very large but the other 4 were very stunted and well behind the other 2, those are only making male flowers. The large 2 have been a nightmare to try and pollinate because although there are a lot of flowers of both types they just never coincide or the rain washes out the pollen.

I've tried to hand pollinate everything, one grew large and is now rotting. There is another very strange shaped long curvy one which keeps on growing but developed a self inflicted gash somehow with a gluey stuff coming out, hopefully the rest of that fruit will survive. There is one very big one that seems to be going well and another smaller one on it's way. Still got more females coming but with the weather I just can't pollinate anything.

[Lizzy56]

squash tip

I watched gardeners world and Toby made sure his squash leaves were spread out and flat to ensure maximum exposure to sunlight