Winter squash is considered one of our favourite staple crops. It’s candy, nutrient dense flesh brings to life so lots of our favourite cozy winter recipes. Most varieties additionally retailer nicely with no further work. No canning or freezing required! Simply set your squash someplace cool and seize one often to crack open for flavorful soups, pleasant pies, or roasted veggie sheet pans. Sadly, it’s not all the time the best crop to develop for these in heat climates. Comply with our greatest tricks to have success with winter squash in a southern backyard. 

Suggestions for Rising Nice Squash in a Southern Backyard

Having a protracted rising season may be useful when planting lengthy season varieties like Rouge Vif d’Etampes (Cinderella) Pumpkin, which takes 120 days to achieve maturity. However these lengthy, sizzling days include a couple of downsides too. Sizzling, humid southern summers are excellent breeding grounds for pests like squash vine borers and illness like Downy Mildew. They’ll additionally depart your crops susceptible to points like solar scald. 

Choose a Selection Suited to Your Local weather

Discovering open pollinated crops which can be tailored to your area is all the time a good suggestion. Listed below are a few of the winter squash varieties we desire for southern gardens and why we like them.

C. moschata varieties are usually extra immune to vine borers whereas C. maxima are usually extremely inclined. 

Plant Early or Plant Late to Keep away from Vine Borers

Vine borers are the commonest motive we hear southern gardeners speak about giving up on squash. Their means to destroy a superbly wholesome crop is unbelievable. Nevertheless, with cautious timing, you might be able to keep away from them altogether. 

Vine borer pupa overwinter within the soil. They emerge in late spring or summer season. The moths deposit their eggs on the squash crops, totally on the stem close to the plant’s base. For those who watch intently, you’ll probably discover the moths flying low across the bases of your crops throughout this era. 

When the eggs hatch, the larvae burrow into the plant’s stem, feeding on the plant for as much as 4 weeks earlier than they crawl down the stem and into the soil to pupate.

In northern or cool mountainous areas, vine borers might solely have one era per yr. They’re often laying eggs between late June and early July. Sadly, in heat southern gardens, vine borers can lay eggs from Might to early August.

Planting early generally is a useful method to keep away from vine borers in southern gardens. Begin transplants indoors and get them into the bottom as quickly as attainable. Choose smaller varieties that mature extra shortly. 

Relying on Your USDA hardiness zone and first fall frost date, you possibly can fall plant squash to keep away from vine borers as nicely. To assist prolong your season even additional, develop in a hoop home or choose smaller varieties you possibly can cowl with low tunnels. 

Thwart Vine Borers with Different Natural Strategies

Other than timing your plantings, there are a few different natural strategies to exclude or stop vine borers. 

One in all our favourite strategies to guard winter squash and different crops from insect stress is row cowl. Light-weight row cowl permits gentle and air to maneuver by means of whereas excluding bugs. Place it over winter squash crops whereas they’re younger after which take away it when the crops get too giant or start flowering and you must permit pollinator entry. 

Some growers even have luck with the outdated aluminum foil methodology. Cowl the decrease stems of your squash with aluminum foil earlier than the vine borer moths emerge to guard them.

C. moschata squash varieties are often solely susceptible to vine borers when younger, so defending them early within the season is commonly sufficient.

Monitor for Vine Borers and Take away Larvae

If vine borers efficiently assault your winter squash, take away the larvae as quickly as you discover wilting. Gently slice open the squash stem utilizing a pointy knife. Start close to the bottom and slice upward till you discover the larvae. Kill the vine borer larvae with the tip of the knife.

After killing the larvae, mound moist soil over the slice within the squash vine. Hold the reduce part of the squash nicely watered. Some crops will recuperate and develop roots from this part. 

Even when you can’t save the plant, destroying any vine borer larvae may also help decrease the inhabitants in your backyard for later within the season and future seasons.

House Crops Appropriately

All of us wish to plant all of our favourite varieties, even when it means we’ve to cram them right into a small house. It may be tempting to disregard these spacing suggestions we put in rising guides and on seed packets, however generally it does extra hurt than good. 

Dense plantings can prohibit airflow and make crops struggle for vitamins, house, and light-weight. This could contribute to poor manufacturing and points like fungal ailments. 

Trellising winter squash may be an efficient option to save house and enhance airflow. Nevertheless, you will want to assist the fruit of bigger varieties.

Handle Water for Winter Squash Rigorously

Watering winter squash may also help promote good manufacturing. Winter squash thrives with about one inch of water per week. Rainfall could also be enough in spring, however particularly in dry summers, you’ll get higher manufacturing when you water.

To assist stop fungal ailments like Downy Mildew, fastidiously water the crops, focusing water on the roots. Keep away from utilizing a sprinkler or splashing water onto the leaves and fruit. 

Watch out to keep away from over watering. Whereas moist soil is helpful, persistently moist soil may cause rot and different fungal points.

Use Thick Mulch Round Your Winter Squash

Mulch helps suppress weed progress and hold the soil moist and funky, however it additionally retains the soil from splashing up onto the leaves and fruit when it rains. A very good layer of mulch can enhance your crops total well being and assist stop ailments like Downy Mildew.

Take away Downy Mildew Contaminated Leaves Instantly

Eradicating Downy Mildew leaves may also help to minimize and gradual the unfold of this fungal illness. Sadly, it doesn’t guarantee it gained’t come again.

Rotate Your Crops

Rotating your crops, particularly whenever you incorporate relaxation durations with cowl crops, can considerably scale back pest and illness points. Whereas this system is widespread on natural business farms, we regularly see small gardeners forgoing this observe. However it doesn’t matter how small your backyard is, you possibly can observe crop rotation!

Heirloom Highlight: Thelma Sanders Candy Potato (Acorn) Winter Squash

We stock many heirloom winter squash varieties at Southern Publicity, however Thelma Sanders all the time stands out. It’s a southern heirloom, coming from Thelma Sanders, who stewarded the squash for years in Adair County, Missouri. In Thelma’s phrases, this squash is “tremendous meated, higher than candy potatoes.” Sluggish Meals USA added Thelma Sanders to their Ark of Style, a catalog that includes endangered heritage meals.

Whereas Thelma handed in 1998, her legacy lives on by means of this acorn squash. Thelma Sanders is a prolific producer of seeds and is a splendid selection for newbie seed savers. Saving seed from this selection is a straightforward means you possibly can assist shield biodiversity.

Thelma Sanders Candy Potato Squash can also be an ideal selection for these seeking to inventory the larder this season. It has a well-earned repute for unimaginable productiveness and winter storage means. It’s a great way to stretch your harvest a bit of additional into the yr. 

Plant a Seed Program

This spring Southern Publicity Seed Trade has partnered with Sluggish Meals USA of their Plant a Seed Program which options six Ark of Style Crops. By buying Thelma Sanders Squash from us, or one other featured heirloom from the opposite seed companions, you’re serving to present free seeds to high school gardens.

Go to the Plant a Seed 2025 web site to study extra about this system and obtain a reduction code for Thelma Sanders and the opposite featured varieties.