A Gardeners Forum Forums General Discussion The Food Garden Forum Vegetable Gardening Squash growers/lovers....I think I'm on something good here.

I have been paying around with two plants of Early Prolific Straighneck (yellow skin type squash)this year. Two of these plants are part of over 10 plants I've been growing, the diffrence from these two sets to all the other plats is that every time a small baby squash shows up on the stem with the flower at the tip this little flower gets removed from the squash bellow. I have been doing it to these two plants all season long to make sure I had more than one to test and the numbers of squash taken from each of these two plants has been more than I ever expected, in fact, 3x more the number of squash has been taking than from each of the other plants. Now, all the young squash were removed at about 4" to no more than 6" long and all plants were planted about 3' on center, on the same plot, at the same time and no special treatment were given to the two in the this test.
It's too late this year to do this again but I will try again next year with several more plants just to see what gives.

That will be interesting to see if it continues to work for you next year. What do you think the science is behind it? Not expending as much energy on dying flowers?

are you hoping that if the flowers are removed the plant will start producing more immediately?

We love squash and have had a good crop. I put out 2 plants late hoping to have some into the fall but those 2 plants have died. I watered but they died anyway. This has me confused since my first crop has done great and I still have 1 original plant that is producing.

Any thoughts?

That is what I am thinking...less flower material= more juice to the other parts of the plant. It sure looks like the juice is going right into production in my case. When removing the little flower/bulb on top you need to make sure you don't damage the very tip/bottom end of the squash or it will turn brown,at times a few will die too but that is always the case even if you just left it alone.

Just like you.. if I don't get all the plants that I need early the "late plants" if any don't do as well as the first. It may be the weather or the temp. so you're not alone on that one.
Half of my crop still going very strong, some plants I removed when they got sick to the moth/white grub (was away for a week at a critical period in this bugs cycle) Try removing some of the small flowers as soon as you see them and let me know if you notice a change in production also.

thanks.