Successful Squash Gardening Requires the Right Conditions
If conditions permit, squash vines can yield abundance. One simple tip toward abundant squash harvest is pruning squash plants.
Winter squash, if cured and stored properly, can be consumed right through the winter.
Summer squash, like zucchini, can get so out of hand that your neighbors might close the blinds and lock the door when they see you coming up the walkway with an armload.
We’ve all seen those funny garden memes! This photo is one of our favorites!
Funny Facebook Photo
We got a few chuckles out of this popular photo shared on Facebook. If you know who originated it, let us know so we can add proper tribute in the caption. It’s epic!
Growing Squash: Good Conditions = Good Squash
Before pruning, comes the “conditions” for optimal growth. First, as with any plant, you need to plant it right.
Set the Stage for Healthy Growth
- Right timing – see when to plant winter squash
- Good soil – see soil health
- Plenty of sunlight
- Keep plants watered – see drip irrigation system
- Periodic fertilizer, such as compost tea
Then you have to be on the lookout for squash scourges.
Squash Nemeses
- vine borers
- squash bugs
- powdery mildew
- fungus, such as mosaic
If the plant is properly pruned and pollinated to produce fruits in quantity, then, you’ll reap the bounty. Miss any of these markers and it could spell disaster. Any gardener who’s experienced overnight loss of an entire crop will never forget that kind of garden dystopia.
Some give up. Others chalk it up to a lesson learned and resolve to learn, improve and prevent future catastrophes. That’s the way.
Never give up. There are always solutions, even if we suffer losses in the interim, we grow stronger and wiser and more prepared with the knowledge of what to avoid and how, in the future.
Lessons from the garden are valuable lessons for life.
Reasons for Pruning Squash Plants and How It Helps
Our squash has been doing pretty well in the growth category, which isn’t always a sure thing given that we have only a small area of the yard that gets enough sun for most fruits and vegetables. And each season we need to fend off the dreaded powdery mildew, squash bugs, and squash vine borer (SVB’s) with biological bacteria sprays injections and inspections.
As seen in the first photo below here, we have a very dense canopy of leaves. Dense squash leaf coverage could harbor problems. Issues like blocking off access to flowers, promoting more fungus by blocking air circulation, while offering more hidden places for the bugs to set up house, lay eggs and munch away.
On finding evidence of borers, we’re now carefully slicing the stem to locate the SVB larvae, dispatching the culprit, and covering the slit with dirt and mulch if the vine is on the ground. You can read more about that and other tactics at the link above.
So, it was time.
Pruning squash plants helps stimulate growth and reduce disease, while removing hiding places for pests and barriers to pollinators
Benefits to Pruning Squash Plants
- DISEASE PREVENTION – helps reduce common squash diseases, like powdery mildew
- EDIBLE LEAVES – since you can eat squash leaves as you would other cookable greens, you can think of this pruning as also harvesting some garden greens!
- PEST PREVENTION – helps reduce pests by reducing their hiding places
- POLLINATORS: Prune leaves that cover squash blossoms to open access for pollinators.
- STIMULATES GROWTH: Pruning plants can allow the plant more energy to send to roots and fruits.
- SUN & AERATION: Pruning squash plants helps bring in more sunlight and air flow
Pruning Summer Squash Helps Pollinators
We’ve had a growing concern that there seemed to be a lack of fruiting female flowers. It’s like the pollinators are not getting into all the flowers.
So a new solution has been tested and it works: heavy pruning of overlapping leaves.
Squash blossoms are also edible and a tasty addition to stir fry and other dishes.
How to Prune Summer Squash Plants
Pruning up to 30 to 40% of your squash leaves will defoliate the excess and make room for your veggies to grow and thrive.
Prune leaves that:
- overlap
- are laying on the ground
- are damaged
- dead
- diseased
The squash leaves you’ll want to prune are those running criss-crossing over each other, leaves close to the ground, and dead, diseased or dying (DDD’s) leaf material.
The previous year we lost our zucchini to both, squash vine borers and powdery mildew, so this year we’re doing everything we can to help these babies along.
You can harvest and eat the healthy leaves that are pruned to reduce crowding.
We forgot to take a “before” photo of ours crop, so here’s one from GrowVeg that shows what ours looked like before pruning.
Note this radical pruning is for SUMMER SQUASH like zukes and yellow crookneck squash. We’ve done this for our zucchini and our lemon squash.
Pruning Winter Squash Plants
It just makes sense to reduce the load of what the roots and vines need to feed, so we went on to prune our winter squash plants too.
They look much cleaner and happier for the effort… fresh like a good haircut. Just enough to aerate the plants flowers, and young squash, without removing all of their solar collectors in those huge leaves.
Remember, Mother Nature doesn’t necessarily distinguish between the need to grow leaves versus the need to grow the fruit or vegetable. This is where pruning plants becomes the gardener-assisted improvement toward more and healthier crops.
So reducing the squash leaves by around 30%, gives the plant more energy to send to the roots and the growing vegetables.