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How to grow squash and best varieties
Find out how to grow squash for delicious fruits for roasting, soups and much more. Discover our best squash varieties, including butternut, and tips for how to grow them.
Squash are an increasingly popular veg and love a warm summer. Butternut squash is the most popular at the supermarket but there are lots of different varieties to try.
They take up quite a bit of space so they're best suited to growing in a garden or allotment. However, breeding work is being done to create ones for growing in pots on the patio.
We'll show you how to grow them successfully and which are the best varieties to choose.
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How to grow squash: month by month
| January | February | March | April | May | June |
| SOW | SOW/PLANT | PLANT | |||
| July | August | September | October | November | December |
| HARVEST | HARVEST |
Best squash varieties
Which? members can log in now to see the full results and detailed reviews of our Best Buy varieties. If you’re not a member, join Which? to get instant access.
Full testing results for squash
Large squash
| Variety name | Overall rating | Average no of fruit per plant | Yield | Disease resistance | Aroma | Taste | Sweetness | Texture |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 'Barbara' | ||||||||
| 'Bon Bon' | ||||||||
| 'Coquina Inca Gold' | ||||||||
| 'Crown Prince' | ||||||||
| 'Festival' | ||||||||
| 'Harrier' | M | |||||||
| 'Marina di Chioggia' |
OVERALL RATING Ignores price and is based on: flavour (including aroma, taste, sweetness and texture) 50%, yield 30%, health 20%.
Compact squash
| Variety name | Overal rating | Average no of fruit per plant | Total yield (kg) | Yield | Compactness | Quality | Uniformity | Flavour/eating quality | Disease resistance |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 'Amazonka' | |||||||||
| 'Amoro' | |||||||||
| 'Autumn Crown' | |||||||||
| 'Barbara' | |||||||||
| 'Burgess Vine Buttercup' | |||||||||
| 'Butterbaby' | |||||||||
| 'Honeynut' |
Yields are from three plants OVERALL RATING ignores price and is based on: yield 15%, compactness 35%, flavour/eating quality 35%, quality 5%, uniformity 5% and disease resistance 5%. *Good yields but disappointing flavour and/or not compact enough to be recommended
When to sow
Indoors
Sow the seeds into individual small pots or module trays containing a Best Buy compost for sowing seeds in late April or May. They're damaged by frost so keep them in a greenhouse or on the windowsill until the danger of frost has passed in mid- to late May or early June.
Try our Best Buy pop-up greenhouses
Caring for your plants
Planting
Grow squash in a sheltered spot. Soil should be moist but well drained and rich in organic matter. Space plants 1.5-3m apart, depending on the variety. Mulch after planting to retain moisture, either with soil improver or plant through slits in black plastic mulch.
Discover our Best Buy weed suppressing membranes
Feeding
Top dress the soil with general fertiliser after planting. Feed every 10-15 days with a tomato liquid feed when fruits start to swell. As fruits mature, cut the foliage away to help them ripen.
Try a Best Buy watering can
How and when to harvest
Harvest in: September to October
Leave fruits on the plant for as long as possible. Be sure to keep an eye on the weather forecast and pick all the fruits before the first frosts, cutting with secateurs to leave a long stalk.
Discover our Best Buy secateurs
Storing
Leave fruits in the sun or in a greenhouse for around 10 days after harvesting to thicken the skin, then bring them indoors to a cool, dark place. Pumpkins and butternut squashes last up to December so use them first. Other squashes will remain in good condition until the following spring.
Common growing problems
Slugs and snails
Watch out for symptoms of damage, such as holes in foliage and silvery trails, especially just after planting out. Pick off any you find, put down organic slug pellets or apply a biological control (effective against slugs only).
Read more about slugs and snails.
Powdery mildew
A fungal disease whose symptoms are white powdery growth on leaves. It usually affects plants in late summer when conditions are dry. To prevent it, keep plants well watered and mulched. There is no chemical control.
Read more about powdery mildew.
Virus
Courgettes, squash and their relatives are prone to virus infections and symptoms include yellowing, poor growth, stunting and mosaicing, ring-spotting and streaking of the foliage, usually combined with a very poor or non-existent yield. The most commonly seen virus is cucumber mosaic. Viruses are usually spread by handling, or by sap-sucking pests, such as greenfly, as they feed.
Unfortunately, any fruits which do form on virus-affected plants tend to be small, pitted and very unpleasant to eat. If suspect plants appear, remove and dispose of them promptly, but always wash your hands thoroughly after handling virusy or suspect plants.
There are no controls available for virus infections, so avoidance is the key. Check plants regularly and control any pests found. The following year, try to grow virus-resistant varieties, such as courgette 'Defender'.
No fruit
Courgettes, squash and their relatives are all thirsty plants and if they are to perform well they need a fair amount of feeding, too. During dry conditions the plant conserves energy by changing the proportion of male to female flowers. If the soil is too dry they produce more male flowers and, as a result, the crop levels can be dramatically reduced.
Good soil improvement before planting, plenty of water, and the use of a deep mulch with soil improver to conserve soil moisture during the growing season will all help to reduce the problem.
Try a Best Buy watering can
How we test squash
We chose 14 varieties, including three previous Best Buys and some butternuts, as we know how popular these are. We sowed seeds in modules in May and kept them in the greenhouse until they were large enough to plant out. The plants were hardened off and, in June, put outside in their final positions at our trial site in Cambridgeshire. This was in a bed in full sun into which we’d dug well-rotted organic matter. They were planted through slits in a black plastic mulch, in rows 1.5m apart, to help suppress weeds, warm the soil and reduce moisture loss. Plants were spaced 1.5m apart in the rows to give them plenty of room. Slug and snail damage can be a common problem, so we used organic slug pellets. We harvested the fruit in mid-October, noting how many were ripe by this point, as some varieties struggle to ripen many fruits before the frosts arrive. Then, with the help of experts, including a chef, we conducted a taste test to find the most delicious varieties.