Nice plants... I just started mine... I usually start getting fruits when my plants are double the size of yours.. It's normal to have disproportionate amounts of flowers either way. It's can get frustrating when when a flower blooms and it has no partner.. So honestly, I usually let my squash plants do their own thing, when it comes to producing. How small were the female flowers that you pinched off? If all the flowers are still small and not growing quickly, then the plants ARE probably concentrating on growth.

I understand that you are probably trying to get the largest fruit possible.. To do so, you would want to keep no more than one squash per runner (arm, tendril). I like my squash on the smaller side so I leave two or sometimes three on a runner, depending on the type of winter squash and if it's full grown...

Summer squash is a different story.. I'll leave them all and keep picking when ever the fruit is ready to eat, unless if I want seed.

Thank you, this helps alot and it makes sense. The female squash I have been pinching were only about an inch big. Also, I'm not trying to get the largest fruit, I just do not want one fruit on each plant because of a small plant. So will I be able to have butternut squash ready for Thanksgiving?

Got it, thanks. When I went out today I noticed one female flower that looks like it is going to bloom in 2 days, but unfortunately no male flowers will open. I just really want 1 male flower to bloom. Again, they are just small and are slowly developing whereas my female buds are growing exponentially. Could there be a reason for this?

Things like that tend to happen with plants that have separate male and female flowers..

You know, you can eat those little female flowers, sort of like zucchini... I'd go to the store and suppliment with zuccs because one little flower isn't much of a meal... lol

Depending on how big your fruits get, you might end up needing to build slings for any that are growing up on the fence. Give the fruits some support so the vines don't get stressed as much.

I did not know you could eat the small fruit. And yes, I was going to have a sling for the = fruits if one of the male flowers would bloom.

Would it be beneficial to pinch off the female blossoms that may not get pollinated to direct growth to the growth tip? Will the overabundance of female flowers stunt the growth of the plant?

Yes, you can eat immature squash... The immature stage is when most summer squash is used..

As for the female flowers, the plant will discard it if it isn't fertilized by a male. You would have to know the perfect timing of when they're going to bloom to know if the flower can be pinched off. I only could tell a day before, 2 pushing it, if the flower is going to have a partner when it blooms... If none, I pinch em off and eat them like a zucchini.

In logic it would take energy to bring those female flowers to bloom but I don't know how much it will affect the growth of the plant.. I do know that large fertilized growing fruit will slow the plant down...

Thank you! I still would like an answer from another viewer if that would be nice. Just for confirmation.

So tomorrow, a male and female squash are going to bloom on my tallest plant (5 feet, 8 inches tall.) Should I pollinate it tomorrow? Or wait until the plant is bigger?

If you have a female and male flower blooming, I would hand pollinate immediately.

It will produce the fruit that it can support. I don't think you need to worry so much about the size of the plant. They know what they're doing. ;-) Those squash plants get huge! They like very rich soil with a lot of manure.

These are my butternut squash last fall and they started slowly too, until it got hot, then watch out! There's a 2.5' tomato in the bottom right corner for size comparison.

I had more butternut squash than I knew what to do with, big ones too, gave a lot away and I didn't prune at all, just let them go.

Thanks for the info! So how long does it take Butternut squash to mature after pollination? How do I cure it in a humid region like South Florida?

I don't know how long it takes but it should be on the seed package or a seed site online. I leave them in the field until after the first light frost, oh yeah, you're in Florida! ( sorry, I forgot. lol!) You'll have to go by the number of days. The little curly thing near the fruit should be dead when it's ready, or you can thump it to see if it sounds hollow. (I have never been able to get that, myself. )

When I lived in Ontario I kept my squash in a damp stone root cellar under the very old house spread out on wooden pallets. Many didn't last very long, occasionally one would keep into Jan and the mice nibbled on them, even with two cats.

Here in BC, I live on the top floor of a house, our office is on the ground floor and there's a large basement under that. I kept the squash in the office, closed in the wintertime, on an open wire shelf unit with the heat set at 10c to keep the pipes from freezing. It's much drier here than in Ontario also. They all kept much longer. We cooked the last one last week and it was still hard!

Last year I left them out in the garden to harden in the sun for a few weeks after cutting off the vine, rolling them every few days or so then brought them in. I didn't do that in Ontario because of the fall rain and the damage from deer running over them, which happened a lot. I'm doing it again this year. I'm impressed with how long they lasted here last winter!

I have read that they keep well at a cool room temp so if you have a cool room in your house, I would look at storing them there, someplace with good air circulation and spread out so not to touch each other. They're space hogs.