One thing you have to keep in mind is that squash don't just put out a single vine that grows in a straight line. The vines branch. You can prune them to encourage them to branch more, making them spread outwards as opposed to going in one direction. When mine hit the edge of their alloted space, I train them to go off in a different direction.

It really depends so much on the vigor of your plant, how healthy it is, etc. But if you're expecting a squash vine to grow no more than 6 ft or so, that's definitely underestimating by at least half.

So basically I need to ground grow it seems. Here's my scenario: I have a 12'x12' garden, bordered by landscape timbers, stacked 2 high, so 8". On top of those is a 3' chicken wire fence. I'm hoping not to chew up half of my space with these squash, kind of like my zucchini did this year. So, with the habits you've observed, would it be possible to plant them at the edge of my garden, and train the vines to grow along the edges of the timbers, thus keeping them on the perimeter, and out of everything else? If I could plant on each side of my garden, and train them to grow around the edge, I'd be ok with that instead of the trellis. Like I said, I just don't want to have a huge area overrun with one plant, and have my other choked out. I seperate my 12x12 garden in 4x4 blocks, similar to a square foot garden, although I do not cram stuff like square foot gardening says. I don't want to lose several blocks with squash, but I could see losing the back 1 foot of the outter blocks working out fine, especially because I don't need to mess around trying to harvest the squash until late summer.

Joe

In another thread ltilton states accurately that these vines really like being on the ground. Healthier, stronger, more productive, but more space consuming. In a trellis they will go up erratically, needing help from you, but then they will go across. So yes, either give up half your garden, or go up a trellis and prepare to do some vine organization.

There are butternuts "bush" (very short vine), in another thread I and others state they are not too productive, short vine (about 10 ft), and regular (about 15 ft). I prefer regular, and all my regular spend a lot of their length going across instead of up. My trellis is 15X8, and about six regular vines is all you can fit in there.

If all you have is 12 x 12 and don't want to give it all over to the squash, trellising them is about your only option. As glib says, you'll have to keep training them, cutting them back to make them branch and spread instead of climb upward.

I'd think you could get 3 vines into 12 '.

One thing to keep in mind, however, is that squash roots grow at least as long as the vines. They aren't going to confine themselves to a 12 x 1 space.

Well, I think my best option is to make my garden bigger then.

Joe

Is there a border somewhere that would accommodate vining plants away from your main garden? I've never grown Butternuts on a fence, but Trombocinos, which are related but are best as summer squash, have done well on a fence for me. And I've also had plants climb trees.

I'm contemplating one of the smaller varieties. I've been browsing around on the seed websites, and have found a few hybrids that stay more compact, but do have smaller fruits. That is actually not a bad thing, as the smaller ones may accomodate my lack of a need for huge squashes. I haven't needed a huge garden, because I don't grow everything on this side of the moon, and I'd hate to spend more time & money to expand, just for some overgrown squash vines. I also don't need 20 squashes either, so the less vigorous ones would suit me.

Joe

I grow five different squash plants this year. I agree that the small one is my favorite one. I have had this for many years. It is the same that they sell at Halloween, small, yellow and orange. I think that it may be called Tiger Stripe. It tastes dry and excellent. My friend, with good soil, was able to get five with a plant. It is not too big compared to other squashes. Yes, other big squashes would much prefer running on the ground. Even one of mine grows in the raspberry bushes, it still works. But the big one needs to be frozen after you cut it because you can never eat the entire 10 pound squash. The small ones last until December.

Well, I decided I want to grow the regular size, so I began the expansion of my garden. I'm expanding by 4 feet on 2 sides, making my garden space now 16'x16'. The added space can be used for my squash, so, with that said, is it safe to plan on using the entire 16' length, but confine the width to 4 feet, basically using up 4 of my 4'x4' blocks? I'm just trying to lay out where I'll be planting things, and how much space to dedicate.

Joe

They Say the minimum squash space is 50 sq ft, so that 4x16 should give you enough. You'll have to keep the vines trained.

My trellised butternut takes up maybe a foot out from the trellis. My 'Waltham' spreads maybe 10' wide.

Dan

Perfect! Thank you everyone for your input, and now I look forward to growing these squash. Plus, with my expansion, I am still left with another 16x4 strip of realestate to plant with something else.

Joe

Waltham Butternut can be a monstrously large plant. Much of it depends on how much fertile soil it can grow over and drop roots into. As it does so, it is easy to think of it as many individual plants. The vines can easily grow 20 feet in every direction and yield many fruits. This is how they are grown commercially. But us home gardeners generally cannot offer them all that room.
Vines that grow over fertile soil will be huge and vigorous. Soon after they grow past that into weedy, unkept areas, the vines lose vigor and slow down. It's a compromise. I grow my 6 Butternuts in a 5' wide, 25' long bed and let the vines run off into the mowed weed field. As soon as the vines leave the bed, it's easy to see them lose vigor. The vines that wander thru the tomato patch are quite more vigorous. They all still set a decent bunch of fine squash, plenty for me.
Several times I have grown winter squashes in a cultivated, prepared, fertile hill surrounded by a weedy, mowed, unfertile field. For me this has produced only modest plants with low quality squashes. I have at last learned that these plants need to run their vines over more moist, fertile, prepared ground in order to form quality fruits. I'm only giving you my experience, your mileage may vary.

That's my experience, too, tcstoehr. I've also noticed this year that the tomatoes closest to the squash patch are less vigorous than the ones further down the row. The vines aren't into the tomatoes, but I'll bet the roots have gone that far.

The spot my garden is in has some seriously nice soil. I chose this spot because, unlike the rest of my yard, the grading was done with some nice, rich topsoil. I dug a hole 18" deep in a few spots, and it was still super nice soil. My yard is on a hillside, but unlike my neighbors, my hills were leveled off so I have flat areas. Basically there's a flat area by the house, where I built my deck, and where the kids tend to play. Then it goes up hill, to the next flat spot, where I located my garden, and this flat spot seems to have been created with ALL topsoil, rather then crappy clay filler. Anyways, with that said, things grow really well up there, so I expect I'll have to keep the squash under some control. I guess I'm considered warned.

Joe

Joe,

What I do (that works for me) I have two gardens and I constantly am running out of room. I got those huge totes from walmart (the ones that you put beverages in and ice for an outside party?..maybe like 5 bucks)Put some holes in the sides, fill the bottom with a few inches of rock, followed my soil and compost. I got two of those. One I plant with squash and let it grow on my front stairs. They are huge stairs, so the squash go whereever they want. Second I did with cukes, same way, on my deck. This way they can go where they want, and aren't clinging on to other plants or just being bossy. They did really well. Got all the sun and space they wanted. Didn't abuse my poor tomato plants either, or shield on light on others.

Squash are bossy.

Bossy is OK as long as they are tasty. I actually just started my garden this year, mainly because I got tired of watering my container grown veggies. I mainly grew peppers and tomatoes in containers, but once they got big, as I'm sure you know, they need water at LEAST once a day. I got tired of that, and decided it was full blown garden time. I guess my plan is to plant squash in the corner, and train it along the edge, away from other stuff. This way the roots can run out under the lawn too, and not entirely in the garden space. I guess next year will be the squash experiment year. This yeah, it was the zucchini that taught me that it requires MUCH more space then I thought. I am however putting a limit on my garden size at 16'x16', because if I get carried away, I'll end up resenting the work it will take to maintain.

Joe

This is such a good thread! I learned even more about this plant that I too want to try next year. The thought occurs to me that since this plant is going to need this much space, it might be a good idea to plant as much of it as possible one year, freezing the surplus, so that the next year you can dedicate the space to something else.

After reading this thread that closely followed mine on the same subject, I am going to dig a new squash bed this fall. It makes so much sense that a vine this long would need to be rooting down in multiple areas in order to do its very best.

Thanks to all of you for sharing!

Just one more thing to consider. You can always plant a quick growing crop along side your butternut squash. The squash doesn't germinate and become a 15 foot vine over night ;) I often will plant my squash alongside my spring veggies - radishes, spinach, turnips and peas. When the squash really start growing with the heat, the spring veggies are done. Just another way to use your space more effectively I guess....

Oh, and get seed from a good seed source. I bought cheapo Waltham butternut squash seeds this year and only got about 5 squash off of 3 plants (granted, they are like 8-10 lbs per squash....)

That's HUGE for butternut!

Butternut is really a relatively modest squash compared to some of the big growers.

Yeah, 8 to 10lbs would be way too big for me to use at once. The ones I've seen at farmer's markets and at the store were maybe 3 to 5lbs. Thats more what I want. I also plan to fill the space where the squash will eventually run with my spring crops, as mentioned. I am planning, well, the wife want ME to plan, on growing some spinaches and lettuces, and maybe some other greens, next year. I hear collards are good, so maybe I'll try those. I also plan to grow some turnips in addition to my usual root crops, including radishes, carrots, and kohlrabi.

Joe

If you only want a few plants...and you have the space to do it...you can plant them on the ends of beds and train their sprawl outside and away from the beds.

It lets you keep some space in the beds for other plants.

Interesting thread. I am growing waltham squash this year. I have three plants in one hill, initially designated with 10X10 space. There is NO way to contain them within this space. They set many fruits, much more than 3-5 per plant as described by many seed vendors. So I suggest you give as much space to it as possible.

Exocytosis, my 3 Burpee Butterbush plants stayed (with a bit of redirection) within their 4X8 sq ft area and had good production despite a bit of SVB damage.

grandad_2003, really nice harvest! I probably will also try it next year. A different topic, when storing butternut squash do rats/mice eat them in the basement? I am not sure our shared basement are free of rats/mice.

I dont have a basement so would only have a guess... which would be yes, since rats seem to eat most everything.

I just stored mine in my kitchen in a basket and we just last week processed the last of them. I did trellis and I think the deal with trellising is just plant more seeds and get 2-3 off of each vine by pruning down to one leader. This year I used cheap seed and never again. They are stunted and like dwarf squash :(. My cushaws are enormous and still producing so I know the soil is good.

I grew butternuts last year with some great success! I think from 2 plants, i got 10 butternut squash (with a late start.) This year I have I think 4-6 plants going and the vines are already crazy long. They will sprawl like crazy as others mentioned. They escaped the garden area last year and made it close to the house. The good news is that you can pick the vine up and move it to wherever you want it to go. So you can basically have it circle the garden if you wanted. This year, some of my vines are climbing fences, some are crawling on the ground. Hoping for 20+ squash this fall!!

jocoyn, you said you store you squash in kitchen. Isn't that too "hot" for storing squash? I remember many sources are saying ~50F is best but indoor temperature is usually above that (~75F). How long does it last at indoor temperature?

I stored mine in the kitchen and they did great. Its about 70 degrees in there (maybe more when we are cooking.) we ate the last one in I think April and it was terrific.

ilodatao, great to hear that. Guess I don't need to worry about rats now.