Kitchen Garden Forum

I'm not sure if this is an either/or type question. However a few people have asked about different approaches for growing squash and it just so happens we have two of them on our allotment:

A - "Standard" - This is our patch, around 4x5 Sq Metres with the fruit lurking under the ever expanding canopy

B - "Climbing" - this is a neighbour's. As you can see the plants are growing up the mesh and the fruit is hanging (or near the left hand side, on the ground):

Does anyone have any comments on the relative merits of each approach? My one seems to be generating vast amounts of foliage & consuming ground - does the climbing approach make better use of ground?

Colin - I suspect the best selected method will depend on the type of squash grown as you're certainly right about them taking up growing space. I think it would be very difficult to grow the large squash like pumpkins and Crown Prince up a trailing fence because of the weight strain on the plants once the fruits start to get big and heavy, unless you rig up a complicated method of netting them. I used to grow Sweet Dumplings, and as the biggest fruits are about the size of a large grapefruit they lend themselves quite well to climbing up a trellis, etc.whereas a Crown Prince, for example, I'm sure just would collapse under the weight. If you've got the space, the bigger varieties are certainly good for ground cover and smothering the weeds. What varieties are you growing, and what is your neighbour growing?

We grow them with a fence of windbreak netting round them so they can't grab us as we walk past then go looking for fruit when the foliage collapses with the first frost.

Primrose wrote:Colin - I suspect the best selected method will depend on the type of squash grown...What varieties are you growing, and what is your neighbour growing?

Well, I'm growing Crown Prince, Marina di Chioggia and Bon Bon. All of these are in the "large" category and obviously it's too late to change much this season.

Primrose wrote:I think it would be very difficult to grow the large squash like pumpkins and Crown Prince up a trailing fence because of the weight strain on the plants once the fruits start to get big and heavy

I'd agree with the principle of this.... Interestingly, if you look at the second photo, you'll see fruit that's already reaching the size of a football on the far LH side. He's managed to get all his big fruit resting on the ground with the plants rambling arms then growing up the fence, so that sort of counters this issue.

It strikes me that another year, I could have 4-5 fences like this across my space, giving the plants room for more leafy growth? Now would that actually be any benefit (eg. more food from photosynthesis) or would that just divert energy that could be going into production of fruit?

Obviously the fence method will involve more maintenance. I can only quote from my own experience of growing Sweet Dumplings one year, when two plants grew flat across the ground and one accidentally climbed up 6 foot clematis trellis and disappeared over into my neighbour's garden. I didn't notice any difference in leaf size etc but the climbing one did suffer a lot more from the wind the higher up the fence it grew, which whipped the leaves about a lot more and caused more damage. If you put some protective netting up your fences this would eliminate this problem. It will also depend on how much you want to grow on your allotment because the fence method is obviously a space saver.