Spaghetti Squash

Although I had mentioned my spaghetti squash in various posts before, I wanted to do a topical post this time describing my experience growing spaghetti squash in the spring.  I got the seeds from a store-bought squash from a year ago.  Last year I tried growing it in the fall but it didn't do to well because I didn't plan the garden very well, and it got too crowded, plus I was not able to protect the vines from squash vine borer as well as I normally am able,due to the crowded condition.  I got a few though, but this spring I wanted to give it a better effort.

Early Start!

I started my seeds around mid-February.   It was very early, but the winter this year seemed very mild at the time, and I thought I would start some seeds very early and see if I could keep them in pots until at earliest mid-March, and put them in the ground then. Our average last frost here is late March, and I thought I could just cover them whenever we had frost.  I started them indoors, and when we had nice sunny weather I would bring them outside, and back inside into our sun-room when it was cold at night.

in late February

I started two of these cup "pots" with two seeds each, which would become my two hills.   Around early March, I decided to risk it and just put them in the ground.  If they died due to a cold snap, I could just plant more, since I had plenty of seeds. So I made a large double-wide hill, which is basically a mound of dirt, and some compost from my chicken coop (I use the deep-litter method where I throw leaves and other compost in their coop, and then later after its composted use it in the garden).   After mixing the dirt from the garden, some of this compost, and some bagged "garden soil" I had a good rich soil for starting them.   Once planted in the garden, I did have some plastic tarp handy, and I did have to cover them a few nights when we had frost, but they survived.

Hail!

After a pretty mild March, the spaghetti squash were off to a great early start, and were actually just starting to lean over and start "running".  Then one night at the end of March, we had a pretty violent hail storm.  It left lots of small dents on our cars! Some of the hail was a bit bigger than quarter size!  It did a number on my 4 spaghetti squash plants.  One had the main vine broken off but fortunately right above the first node where there were side runners starting to form.  Two other ones had the main runners bent badly but not completely severed.   So I gently piled mulch and compost around the damaged vines, to help support them and encourage more rooting.  The leaves were all ripped up too.   I was worried they were not going to recover well so I sowed a couple more seeds in the hill nearby just in case.  The original vines recovered very well the following weeks, I think for most of them the secondary runners took over as the main vines, and some just healed up.  The extra seeds I planted came up too, but I think were overwhelmed by the original plants.

A few weeks after the hail the vines had recovered very well

In order to both protect the main vines from future squash vine borer egg laying, plus to encourage rooting along the leaf nodes of the vines, I also began to cover up the main vines with dirt and compost, or just leaf mulch, whichever was a hand.  Every few days as the vines kept growing, I kept covering them up.  This also helps develop very large root systems at different point along the vine.

Early Flowers

Around mid-April. I was very surprised to see a female flower forming already on one of my vines.  I was a little worried because I could see a bunch of female flowers developing but very few males.  This is opposite of what I am used to! Usually the plants produce bunches of male flowers first.

female flower view from top

 The female flowers have a small squash below the blossom.  I did find a male flower that had opened just in time, and was able to hand-pollinate the first female blossoms.  Below is a female blossom the day after its been pollinated.  The small squash will begin to swell, and a day or two later, the dried up flower falls off.

Pollinated flower

Maturing Squash

In the past, I've had damage to my squash either from bugs or maybe rats or some other pest, so I have made it a practice to cover my maturing squash and pumpkins with some netting to help protect them from getting chewed on.  I have about 8 squash forming now, at different sizes and stages.  The female blossoms that come since these had shrived up and died,  probably because the plant cannot support too many.  The plant stopped producing female blossoms for about a week and a half, but just the past couple days more started appearing again.

Three medium size squash maturing.

This is the first one to develop, and its also the biggest one I have so far. Its almost ready.

I'm hoping as these first fruits start maturing the plant will then think it can produce a second batch.  I've been very pleased so far though with what I have.

Pests

Since I got a very early start, the vines have not gotten attacked by anything yet!  This is certainly the best way to beat Squash Vine Borers (SVB) if you can start them very early.  The typical pests I have to deal with are the SVBs, squash bugs, and cucumber beetles.  Have not seen any squash bugs yet.  Have seen  one or two cucumber beetles so far.  Unfortunately I've seen that  the SVBs have also gotten an earlier start than usual.  I've actually seen a few moths already (first one was end of April).  I think this is due to the very mild winter.   I've picked off a few eggs off of the tips of a couple vines, but their heavy egg-laying has not begun yet, since I have only seen and picked off about 6 or so eggs the past couple of weeks.   With my vine covering efforts ongoing, its not a big concern yet.  I typically start injecting BT into the leaf stems and exposed vine areas as a preventative when I start seeing damage, but I have not started that yet.

Harvesting it

I decided to start picking some of the ones that seemed ready.  From reading about it, most recommended  a hard skin ( resistant to fingernail  puncture)  and a yellow or buff coloring.  They also recommended the stem starting to brown, but I decided not to wait that long since the vine is still growing a lot, and I have also picked pumpkins and other squash with green stems before and they finish riping quite fine anyway.  I also want to encourage the vine to keep producing, so maybe removing the fully grown ones might help.  So I picked the first two.  Their skin was definitely hard, and the coloring was right, plus they have stopped growing for a while now. These are around 5.5lbs each.

First spaghetti squash of 2016, picked May 11th

As of June 8th, picked 11 so far (we ate two of the smaller ones already).
There are about 4 other on the vine at various stages of development. The vines are getting hit by SVB, and much of the original base of the plant is dead or dying, but the vine tip and runners are about 20ft from the base, still growing and looking good. I've been occasionally covering up exposed vines with dirt, and checking for SVB eggs occasionally but I'm not too worried since I've gotten such a good harvest so far. The acorn squash have not done bad either. Those are Table Queen acorn squash.

Postmortem July 3rd

Just today I picked up my last spaghetti squash, which bring the total to 17, of which 6 have already been eaten. They have been of various sizes, some very nice size, and some smaller.  Been extremely please with this harvest.  The one I picked today was on the last remaining vine, which has long since separated from the main base, but has been growing through roots along the vine.  The rest of the vine I have pulled out, and have seen much evidence of SVB, but also of Squash bugs, which I think are also a major reason the rest of the vine died off so much.  I have squashed lots of squash bugs and found many eggs on part of the vine that I have pulled off. Aphids were never much of a problem, but there was some powdery mildew, especially since we had such a wet spring.  

So I think the key for success for this was:

- Started early to beat the pests to the punch.  

- Covered vines with dirt as they grew.

I never really spent much time ever picking off eggs, or never sprayed anything for the pests, or tried to do much else.