Lots of flowers? Any female flowers? If so, then hand pollination is the way to go. I have lots of bees, but I do hand pollination routinely because it is so easy. At least Waltham, which is a popular variety, and a likely supermarket variety, is a heirloom, so a volunteer might be one as well. If few female flowers, well, that's just the luck of the draw. I will add that these plants produce about five times more male flowers than female flowers.

Thanks for that information. Can I ask, how many fruits should you expect from one vine?

I was just attempting to prune it away from other plants and discovered a 2nd squash hanging inside a Sedum AJoy. [g] That was a nice surprise.

Hard to predict. I might get a few. But as I asked, do you have any female flowers? If yes, then pollination is an issue for you, and hand-pollination is the answer. If no, then it's just bad luck, and there is nothing you can do about it.

Not to hijack your thread but I too have a runaway squash question. Will the vines smother or strangle things theyre growing over? Mine is scrambling across small blueberry bushes.

I believe you can pinch off the tips of vines to encourage branching and keep them from growing into other areas. I've done it in the past. I would usually get 3-5 fruits per vine, and I often hand pollinated - it didn't always take, tho. Volunteers are unpredictable.

BTW, those male blossoms can be eaten. I used to collect them and store in containers in the fridge until I had enough to make fritters. I would also chop and add them to rice dishes.

I checked out the flowers on the vine and sure enough, I haven't seen more females, just male. So then I think I'm not having any problem with pollination if both female flowers were pollinated and develped fruit. I also see a lot of bees in the garden.

That's just bad luck. Roll the dice. Now, you only have ONE PLANT, and as I said, there are usually something like five times more males than females. So statistics aren't in your favor. If you want lots of fruit, it helps to have lots of plants. I have five or six plants and, right now, I probably have four fruit on the vines.

Four fruit total on 5-6 plants? If so, then I guess I'm doing okay to have 2 fruits. [g] I wish I had room for 4-5 plants. This is the only space I have for squash plants. I might b able to squeeze in 2 plants next year, but that would be it.

It volunteered in an ornamental bed that I erected a Berm in last Fall, with the contents of a half finished compost bin etc.

Well, nice thing about moschata squash is that it's vining, so it goes wherever it wants to go. You don't really need to allocate space for it. You do need a square foot or so of decent soil for each plant, though. I just hand-pollinated two more this morning. So I guess one can add those to the count. That was unusual. This is in an 8x5 foot bed.

My squash plants volunteered in a 2ft wide x 2ft high x 15ft long Berm that we created from unfinished compost last fall. I thinned down to two seedlings and it's traveling really from one end to the other in and around other plants.

You are in zone 8, so you still have plenty of time for newly pollinated fruits to develop. I'm already seeing cooler nights.

Yes, in fact my season is so long, many of my plants get "tired" in midsummer. I plant out in February, and by July, they're sort of done. I replant then. I'm on my second generation of butternuts. Replanting is challenging in midsummer, though, because of the intense and unremitting heat. But for vining plants, you can let them spread anywhere. Over lawns, around perennials, etc. To the extent you can be forgiving about it, no value in letting them block potential growing beds.

Ooohh.....just came in from working in that bed. I had a daylily that was done and the foliage was looking awful, so I was pulling that out and what did I find suspended in the daylily but two more squash! lol One is larger than the others even and the other is just starting. So I have two large and two small. We eat a fair amount of squash, so this is a bonus I didn't expect to have and really no effort on my part.

I can only imagine how hard it is to start plants in mid summer there. We watch the weather across the country and you've been getting temps in the 100s there for a good part of the summer, yes? I'm not sure how normal that is for you, but, we've had the opposite. 2 months of maybe one day a week of sun. My garden plants were half the size they were last year. Marigolds that are all foliage? Late on the tomatoes and Peppers. High humidity but only a couple of days in the 90s. A LOT of rain! Unusual for us. I have two full rain barrels that I haven't had to use all summer. That never happens. We've been having drought every summer for all but one of the past 6 years.

So, with such a long growing season, when do your squashes start ripening and curing? Do you let them stay in the field to do that?

Starting plants in mid-summer here is about watering every day, and frequently covering them with shade cloth as well. This year, we've had forty continuous days with highs of 105F. That's somewhat unusual. Now, I plant out butternuts in late February, but they remain covered with netting until mid-June, to avoid SVBs. Life cycle of SVBs here is such that they go away entirely by then, so the second generation doesn't need netting at all. Moschata are allegedly resistant to SVBs, but not around here! That makes hand pollination necessary early-on. Probably harvested the first squash in April. When completely tan and hard, I harvest, and let them cure on the countertop, after giving them a bath in dilute bleach to sterilize their surfaces. The latter ensures a lifetime of at least six months on the countertop. We've harvested more than a dozen so far this year.

The trouble with a long summer growing season is that it can be challenging to start winter veggies. My onions and root crops go in in November, and the summer veggies are still sort of hanging on then. Those winter veggies get planted in rows 2 feet apart, to allow summer veggies to be started between them before they are done the following spring.

40 days of 105F?! I've lived in New England my whole life, I wouldn't last a month there...lol. We tried Florida once and after 6 months we decided it wasn't for us and moved back home. We were in the a/c more than we were outside. And that was before I was a gardener. You must be a very hardy soul...lol.

I don't really use bleach for anything. Is there anything else you can use? Like white vinegar or rubbing alcohol wiped on the surface? So if you don't do that, the fruits start to rot?

We used to take the kids to a local historical site, that was a working village representing the time before electricity etc. They grew gardens, didn't have central heat, but large fireplaces in the homes. We'd go in the fall when it was pretty nippy out and the houses would be cold, and they would have harvested squashes and pumpkins. Huge Hubbard squashes and they would be in every nook and cranny. The cold temps must have made them last longer.

Twelve squashes, should give you some great winter fare. Lots of Vitamin A. I was reading the other day, that if you eat Avocado with any food high in Vitamin A, it will double the amount of Vitamin A you absorb.

I used to garden in the Pacific Northwest. Also 8b, but TOTALLY, ABSOLUTELY different, climate-wise. Good example of why USDA zones are very poor descriptors of at least summer gardening climate. We usually get 10-15 days over 100F here, and months in the 90sF. Summer mornings are pleasant outside, but it's a little dicey in the afternoons these days. I do miss the PNW.

In order to sterilize the surface of winter squash, I suppose you can dip the squash into a dilute alcohol solution if you don't have bleach around. If you don't sterilize, the fruit will start to rot sooner. Vinegar won't sterilize.

Interesting about avocado and Vitamin A!

Yes, lots of rain and cooler temps in the PNW! We have low 70s and low humidity and a nice breeze here today! The rest of the week too, with one day of rain expected. Mornings are already getting cool. Perfect to me.

Thanks for the interesting conversation... :-)

FWIW, I just wash hard squashes with castile soap and water, using a scrubby sponge. Never used bleach or anything else, and they kept just fine.

And IMPE, those vines will sometimes put down roots at the nodes, which I think helps them get more nutrients and water.

That's interesting. Castile soap doesn't actually kill bacteria, but it binds with bacteria effectively, allowing them to be flushed away. So some say that it is anti-bacterial.

I'd feel happier about castile soap than bleach. Not that a little diluted bleach is horrible either, it's just not my habit. I'm sure once you rinse it off, it's fine.

Dried bleach does leave a bit of residue. Sodium hypochlorite. The stuff is an irritant, but certainly not in the amounts that you'll find left behind on a squash that was rinsed in dilute bleach solution. It will tend to kill bacteria that decide to settle on your squash, though. I've had butternuts last for almost a year.

I noticed three more squash today! lol One is really big and I wondered where did that come from? The other two are pretty small. It should be interesting to see if they have time to grow and ripen.

Squash and cukes play games with us. When they're green, they hide in leaves. Just tonight I found an Armenian cuke that weighed about four pounds. Aaaaargh! Straight to the compost pile. It had been lurking there for weeks, no doubt. Last year, it used to be worse, because the plants were all just lying on the ground. This year I had them all up on tomato cages, thinking that it would be harder for the fruit to hide. Fooled me!

I have done that before on the cukes. That is some big cuke! lol With me, I shouldn't be surprised because I really haven't gotten in there and inspected the whole thing. It was just that the area where I found this last one, was in the area I walk past every day and it's suprising that it's just all of a sudden so visible. What is also interesting, is that I had thought of trimming the ends of some of the vine because it was going everywhere, but, I found I could manuever it around plants, so I didn't. Some of these new squash are on parts of the vine I would have trimmed off. This is really working out for me, because when I've tried to grow them in the backyard, with about 5-6hrs of sun only and tree roots to contend with, I've had either no squash or one squash. I gave up trying to grow them and we do eat a lot of butternut squash. And I had not even contemplated growing them in front because I didn't think I had room for it. And now I have potentially 5 squash and it really didn't take room away from anything else. Very happy about it. Now if they just mature and taste good. [g]

Update on my squash plant and a couple more questions.... I see 10 squash out there! I'm pretty happy wtih that. At least 4 of them, those which formed first, appear Tan colored. The rest are at different stages and it is still forming new fruits. Since it's been a number of years since I have grown squash, due to lack of sun etc., I forget when to harvest and whether I should stop allowing it to push out more fruit because it won't have time to ripen? I've considered cutting off the growing tips of the plant, but the fruit have surprised me. I look at them and they are pretty small, just beginning, and like 3 days later, they are like triple in size. We are still having a steady supply of a lot of rain, and wondering if this is accelerating the growth?

That is the other question, I am unsure of how much time I still have for them to ripen. With climate change, our Falls are longer. When do they stop ripening? When it gets too cold at night? One last question, should I keep fertilizing it?

I don't think they stop ripening, but everything will go slower as the temperature drops. Of course, they need to be protected from a freeze, which will kill them. Tan fruits that can't be dented with a fingernail are ripe and ready to harvest. They may still have green streaks near the stem end. For me, those green streaks seem to last forever! To some extent, those streaks disappear after extended on-the-shelf curing. By the same token, I believe that once the fruit starts to turn tan, when picked, they will continue to turn tan. Of course, soft green butternut can be eaten as a summer squash, but it won't be as sweet as fully ripened squash.

Do I want to risk breaking the skin by trying to stick a fingernail in it? Does it hurt to leave them on until just before a frost, even if they are already tan? Will they keep getting sweeter?

And I take it, it's fine to just let it keep pushing out fruit? It doesn't impair the plant's ability to ripen the older fruit?

When you have fruits on the plant right before a frost, do you just pick them all and pull the plants? And any unripe, non tan fruit can be used like a summer squash. Is that the idea? Or do you pick the ripest and leave any unripe fruits to try to ripen some more and just cover them up for a night or two of frost and only pick them before an actual freeze?

I think any tiny break in the skin will heal readily. I often harvest fruits that have natural healed breaks. Butternuts keep getting sweeter after harvest (for a few months). That's called curing. So I have to assume that you can cure them on the vine, but it's somewhat riskier leaving a fruit on the vine when it could be safely inside on a shelf. If you're going to have a freeze, and can't protect the plants, you have no choice but to harvest, and or just dump the killed plant. Yes, immature squash is always edible.

Thank you Dan! Appreciate all your help!