Butter Nut Squash query

I've got a few butter nut squash plants growing - I'm quite pleased with them as something got all my courgette plants which were planted in the same area.

My question is - even though a couple of the plants are growing longer and longer and seem to have plenty of green buds, none of them seem to be opening out into flowers.

Am I doing something wrong? And if they do manage to flower is it getting too late in the season for them to do anything worthwhile?

 

I ve never grown these nearest thing being pumpkins .
But I would say they do take up lots of space and ramble on before coming up with many flowers.

I think you still have time but time is running out.
I hope you have them in a sunny place.

 

I have grown them before but not for some years. I had a whole bed of them and they were excellent. My main worry is that we'll run out of summer before they do anything.

Yes, they're in a very sunny place.

 

Did you use a high nitrogen feed that would promote green growth at the expense of flowers? A dosage of tomato fertilizer might help produce some flowers/fruit.

I found trailing butternuts took up a fair bit of space, so next year intend to grow up vertical mesh fencing [1] plus try vertical Rylock fencing tubes to reduce their footprint.

I found the biggest loss of young courgettes was leatherjackets eating through them around ground level.


[1] Similar to this climbing squash on the left of the bush squashes/courgettes growing up 900mm rectangular mesh fencing and would happily gone higher.

 

That is a wonderfully regimented flourishing site to behold, Scrungee.


I am limited for space so I grow them vertically up strings.

Two plants within a square metre.


The male flowers have just started appearing.


Around the same time back in 2018.



It's all down to the weather conditions is what I have concluded.

Beast from the East occurred in 2018 but temperatures then quickly stabilised with the onset of spring, enough for the cucurbits to be planted outdoors by late May.

This year, the night time temperatures seemed cooler for a longer period thus delaying planting out until mid to late June. Even then, the butternuts took an age to establish.

 

Do they suffer from wind damage being grown that high? I'd love to grow them like that, but on my exposed plot the first summer gale would make a right mess of the foliage.

 

@Scrungee

Generally, there will be little to no damage after a strong gale. One or two torn leaves was the worst my plants have ever suffered.

Just make sure that the string is not garrote wire thin and to twine it around the vine with a bit of slack in the string.