Butternut Squash Planted Out

The butternut squash BBC Digin seeds did well.  We planted five and all five have come up looking very good.   These were planted in a cardboard egg box and it was a great success.   As I have discussed in an earlier post, we tried starting these outside but with all the rain they got rather flooded and I feared we may never see anything.  As it happens, I read that squash seeds really like to be soaked in water for 24 hours prior to sowing and so the drowning that these seeds got possibly were just what they wanted rather than the other way r0und.

Planting in cardboard egg boxes has a number of benefits.  Mainly they are seen as “waste”, freely available each time you buy eggs, and easy to break apart into six when it comes to planting outside, no disturbance to the roots and of course the cardboard is fantastic for returning to the ground after a number of months.   What I didn’t realise at the time too was how good they are for watering while you are away.   We sowed the seed and some days later went on holiday.   Before we left I gave all the seedlings indoors a good watering and in turn that soaked the cardboard egg box that the butternut squash seeds were in.   The cardboard that the egg boxes are made of really soak up moisture which meant when we returned from holiday the boxes were still quite damp along with the soil contained within.   So minimal watering needed, the cardboard soaks it up and lets it out slowly.

Today I planted two of the six plants out in the flower bed.

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