Butternut is not my favorite squash, but it is slowly changing my life.
Spaghetti squash is the cucurbita buy to cook and puree the pulp to use in place of water in my favorite bread dough recipe. And spaghetti squash flowers are the ones I like best to air fry on top of flatbread and almost an casserole. I like the small tender leaves of spaghetti squash sliced into soup or added to pasta sauce.
However, for a short while this spring it became a challenge to find much of any food at all in the local markets, so when I saw a butternut squash for sale I bought it quickly. It would be interesting comparing its growth habits with those of my zucchini, yellow straight and my beloved spaghetti squash.
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Speaking of which for photos of my ready to eat yellow straightneck and spaghetti squash (I like them green) Pictures of my Babies
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Interesting may have been an understatement. These plants were like thugs in the garden. Whereas up to this time my growing had been 90% indoors, in water, it became obvious pretty quickly that the butternut seedlings would have to go outdoors and fast.
So I wiped out my piggy bank buying potting mix and devised a system of hardening off the "houseplants" using what I call Quad planters to get them ready to go outdoors. The name comes from my use of a 4-part pot-in-pot method. I use a mason jar to keep 3 nested disposable beverage cups stable, drilling holes in the base of the inner cup and putting one small rock between each plastic cup to keep them from sticking together.
Here is a young butternut squash in one of my Quads, shortly after coming out of the AeroGarden planter.
This one fit in a half cup wide-mouth mason jar. Here it is later, in potting mix:
And here, outside on the ground, with some of its friends and its first flower.
And they just keep growing.
And here is its first baby squash:
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