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.

Winter Squash Plants Before Summer Pruning

Winter Squash Plants After Summer Pruning

The winter squash pruning wasn’t as severe since it’s still early for those crops.

Pruning Won’t Hurt Your Squash Fruit!

While we don’t recommend hacking your squash as severely as the deer got ours, this is to show you that the squash fruit went on to mature as normal into delicious full grown maturity.

As you can see below, our butternut squash is looking good and you can read about our thriving Tetsukabuto squash here. The Tetsukabuto is also particularly pest resistant when it comes to squash bugs and squash vine borers.

You Can Eat Squash Leaves

While squash leaves are edible, you’re primarily growing squash for the fruit it yields, but you can eat the healthy leaves you prune.

Consuming the leaves of vegetables and fruit is a more common practice in rural areas and in foreign countries, and a practice that many in developed nations have forgotten.

For the healthy squash leaves you prune, you can cook or dry and powder them, or add them to your organic compost bin or tumbler. Destroy (burn) any leaves with disease or pests.

How to Prepare and Cook Squash Leaves

African Squash With Onions and Tomatoes: Chibwabwa

Filipino Squash Flower and Squash Leaves

This may give you some ideas of things you might make with squash leaves and squash blossoms.

See also more ideas for edible flowers, including squash blossom stir fry and pickled squash blossoms.

Petrichor:  a Fragrance by Any Other Name

A brief note on an entirely different subject, because welcome rains came while first writing this (originally for our newsletter).

The last few weeks were very hot and very dry around here. So, what a delight it was to check the rain gauge after recent rains: One and a quarter inch!

There’s a word for that distinct smell of rain touching down on earth after a long, hot dry spell. The name for the smell of rain is petrichor, and it’s like the fragrance of joy!

It’s easy to imagine how the plants feel because of how elevating, comforting and wonderful we feel when the needed rain comes!

Garden Delights – Squash Pruning Helped Our Harvest

Along the line of scent-sations, the garden offers up amazing facets of beauty if we take a little time to discover them. Occasionally, we’ll just grab the camera and, with the shutterbug’s point of view, go looking. Here are a few examples.

And… a token lovely heart shaped red bud leaf. Perfect in its imperfection❣️

If you have fun capturing the artistry and design that abounds in your yard and garden, feel free to send it our way. We really dig garden selfies and garden and landscape design and projects, full bragging rights allowed.

You can post comments and/or photos up on our Facebook page, or send us an email.

May your garden flourish and your harvests be bountiful!

You may also enjoy growing tromboncino squash (our favorite zucchini-like squash that’s more pest resistant), and also Tetsukabuto squash.

Keep on Growing!