The Correct Time to Harvest Butternut Squash and How one can Retailer It

The popularity of butternut squash amongst home gardeners isn’t any shock. With its dense, sweet, and barely nutty flesh, it’s no doubt one of the versatile winter squashes. It moreover is accessible in compact, bush varieties that match small areas, much like Butterbush, and it’s easy to develop. 

To utterly profit from the fruits of your labor, adjust to these suggestions on how and when to reap butternut squash along with wanted post-harvest steps, along with curing and proper storage.

Within the occasion you haven’t eaten all of it by then, it ought to can help you put dishes constituted of your homegrown butternut squash in your Thanksgiving desk. 

When to Harvest Butternut Squash

Butternut squash is ready to harvest everytime you uncover a variety of key indicators: it turns from inexperienced to orange, the rind is hard, and the stem/vines have dried up and died once more.

As quickly as you’ll check all the containers, you don’t must reap it instantly. Merely make sure you harvest all the butternut squash sooner than the first fall frost, because it ought to retailer longer if it isn’t uncovered to frost. 

Coloration

As butternut squash ripens, its pores and pores and skin turns from inexperienced to a lightweight beige to a deep, sturdy tan coloration and no inexperienced streaks. Counting on the variability there may be more likely to be some bronze or orange highlights (and no inexperienced streaks) in it when the fruit is ripe. 

Pores and pores and skin

The pores and pores and skin or rind must be laborious and cross the fingernail check out: when scratching it alongside along with your fingernail leaves a mark or breaks, the butternut squash isn’t ready; it desires for time for the pores and pores and skin to harden. One different indicator is boring and by no means shiny or shiny pores and pores and skin. 

Vines and Stems

The vines must be crispy, shriveled, and yellowing, in several phrases, dying when the butternut squash is ready. Inexperienced vines level out that the butternut squash desires additional time. The stem must be laborious and dry and of uniform tan coloration. 

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How one can Harvest Butternut Squash

When it’s time to reap the squash, adjust to these steps: 

1. Using a sharp knife or pruners, decrease the fruit from the vine about 3 to 4 inches of the stem on the squash.
2. Do not elevate or select up the squash by its stem when eradicating it out of your yard, as a result of the stem merely breaks off.
3. If any stems break off, set these squashes aside to utilize first. Butternut squashes with out stems are additional weak to rotting and gained’t retailer successfully because of micro organism can enter the fruit. 

Curing Butternut Squash

After harvesting, you have to to let the pores and pores and skin of the squash harden additional. Inside the course of, any scratches or cuts are being sealed. This course of is known as curing.

Treatment the butternut squash for 1 to 2 weeks at a temperature between 70 and 80 ranges F. Resolve a location that is warmth, well-ventilated, dry, and by no means accessible for critters and bugs. A screened-in porch, storage, or shed is sweet. 

Storing Butternut Squash

After curing, retailer the butternut squash in a cool, dry, well-ventilated location at 50 to 60 ranges F. Make certain that there aren’t any apples, pears, or totally different ripening fruit shut by, as a result of the ethylene gasoline they exude impacts the storage lifetime of squash. 

Accurately cured and saved butternut squash could possibly be saved for 4 to 6 months nevertheless it is best when used inside 2 to a few months.

Saving Seeds of Butternut Squash

In case you want to save the seeds of your butternut squash, make sure that it is an open-pollinated choice; in every other case, the vegetation from these seeds gained’t be true to seed and gained’t have the similar fascinating qualities.

1. Extract the seeds when you end up using considered one of many squashes for cooking. Nonetheless, don’t decrease the squash open in half all the best way during which as you will often do because of decreasing through will damage the seeds. Solely decrease through the pores and pores and skin and excessive layer of the squash from excessive to bottom and as deeply as needed to separate the squash open into two halves.
2. Take away as plenty of the stringy pulp throughout the seeds as potential, then place the seeds in an enormous bowl with chilly water and swirl them spherical to dislodge additional pulp.
3. Pour the pulpy water off the very best and protect the seeds on the bottom of the bowl. Repeat this a couple of events.
4. Drain the seeds in a advantageous strainer and place them in a single layer on plates lined with paper towels. Place them in a dry place out of direct daylight for about one week, or until they’re utterly dried. Retailer them in labeled envelopes in a dry, darkish place.