Bountiful butternuts
I might've gone a little
bit overboard on our butternut squash planting this year. The photo
above shows about half of our planting, growth fueled by chicken deep bedding.
Now that the vines have thoroughly filled in, the patch is pretty impressive. There aren't even any aisles left to mow!
In fact, the squash are
already starting to run out of bounds. This particular stem has passed
over a bed of buckwheat and is moving into our main avenue. Maybe I
shouldn't have used the electric fence on the chickens and should have saved it for our naughty butternuts?
Nearly full-size fruits
are already abundant beneath the leaves. I expanded our butternut
planting this year for the sake of our goats, who particularly enjoy the
seeds (a natural dewormer
and all-around tasty treat). But if everything keeps going at this
rate, both humans and goats might have a hard time eating our way
through the bushels of cucurbits when winter rolls around!
A good problem to have....
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About us: Anna Hess and Mark Hamilton spent over a decade living self-sufficiently in the mountains of Virginia before moving north to start over from scratch in the foothills of Ohio. They've experimented with permaculture, no-till gardening, trailersteading, home-based microbusinesses and much more, writing about their adventures in both blogs and books.
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This is our second year trying butternuts. Last year we only planted a few. We got a lot of squashes for the few plants we planted, but they were very small. This year I planted four initially, and later in the season planted about 20 more. The early squashes are, once again, small, and I'm hoping somehow we can correct the issue on the tsunami of butternuts to come.
Any ideas on how to super-size them?
They're located in a one-year old hugel bed that only has one-year's worth of topsoil. We've mulched extensively with chicken/duck bedding, wood duff from the forest on the back of our property and have previously cycled Crimson Clover/Daikon -> Iron Clay Pea -> Crimson Clover/Daikon. Soil fertility is improving, but we've got a long way to go.
Sounds like you guys may become the Forrest Gumps of butternut squash!
I have found that the squash, by themselves, make excellent gifts. People who don't garden seem to be amazed that you grew them yourself.
I still have two left from last year, believe it or not.