Butternut squash
Cucurbita moschata
also called butternut
The tan, bottle-shaped winter squash that stores best, tastes sweetest and, being a different species from the pumpkins, mostly shrugs off the borer that guts them.
- Type
- Vegetable · Grown as an annual
- Botanical family
- Cucurbit (squash family)
- Foliage color
- Green
- Flower color
- Orange · Yellow
- Sunlight
- Full sun
- Watering
- Moderate–high
- Soil
- Very rich, moisture-retentive
- Feeding
- Tomato & vegetable
- Frost tolerant
- No
- Sow indoors
- 28 days before the last spring frost
- Sow direct
- 7 days after the last spring frost
- Plant out
- 7 days after the last spring frost
- First harvest
- 100 days after the last spring frost
- Harvest ends
- at the first fall frost
- Plant spacing
- 3 ft 3 in
- In-row spacing
- 2 ft 11 in
- Between rows
- 4 ft 11 in
- Square-foot density
- 1 per square
- Sow depth
- 0.8 in
- Root system
- Fibrous and deep-feeding
- Working depth
- 24 in–4 ft
- Can reach
- 6 ft down where the soil allows
- Spread
- 12–16 ft across, about 1.5–2× the width of the plant
- Shallowest pot
- 18 in of soil
Once established it feeds well below the topsoil, which is what carries it through a dry spell that flattens its neighbours. Water long and seldom rather than little and often, so the deep roots have a reason to go down.
The habit is Butternut squash’s own; the figures are what that habit usually comes to at this size, not a measurement of this species. Roots follow the soil either way: a compacted pan, a high water table or heavy clay stops them well short of any of it, and deep open ground lets them go further.
- Cats and dogs
- Confirmed safe
We say a plant is safe only where a named poison-control reference names that exact species and records it as non-toxic to both cats and dogs. Most plants are on nobody’s list, and their absence here is not a judgement about them. This is a record of what those references say, not veterinary advice, and it cannot account for your own animal, the quantity eaten, or a plant treated with anything.
The ASPCA row is titled Butternut Squash, which is unambiguously this plant, and reads Non-Toxic to Dogs, Non-Toxic to Cats. Its printed Latin, Cucurbita maxima cv butternut, is the ASPCA getting the taxonomy wrong rather than naming another plant: butternut is Cucurbita moschata. The same kind of slip sits on its dill row (Anethum graveolena) and its cleome row (Cleome hasserlana). Neither Cornell nor UC Davis carries any Cucurbita.
- When
- About 100–110 days from sowing: harvest when the skin is fully tan with no green stripes, before any hard frost.
- What to look for
- Rind deep uniform tan, too hard to dent with a thumbnail, and the stem corky. A green-streaked one was picked early and will not keep.
- How to harvest
- Cut (never pull) with 5 cm of stem left on; a stemless butternut rots from the scar. Handle like eggs: every bruise is where storage fails first.
- How often
- One or two cuttings as the fruit finish; get everything in ahead of frost.
- Storing the crop
- Cure two weeks somewhere warm (25 °C or so), then shelve in a cool dry pantry: six months is routine and the flavor actually improves until midwinter. Do not refrigerate whole fruit.
Beneficial predators that hunt this plant's pests — grow their favourite flowers nearby to recruit them. companion plant
- Assassin bug ReduviidaeHunts Squash bug
A patient ambusher with a curved beak it drives into whatever it catches — caterpillars, beetles, bugs, and the occasional bee, so count it a generalist rather than a specialist. It will jab a careless finger too, so admire it and leave it be.
- Praying mantis MantidaeHunts Squash bug
A sit-and-wait ambusher that snatches caterpillars, beetles, and anything else that wanders close — friend and foe alike, so count it a mixed blessing. Tall, structured plantings give it perches and egg-case anchors.
- Soldier beetle CantharidaeHunts Cucumber beetle
Soft-winged beetles seen mating on flower heads in high summer; adults and larvae both take aphids and soft grubs. Open composite flowers are their landing pads and hunting grounds.
- Spiders AraneaeHunts Cucumber beetle
Webs, ambushes, and night patrols make spiders the garden’s steadiest generalist predators, taking whatever flies or crawls past. Mulch, ground cover, and undisturbed corners keep the population dense.
- Tachinid fly TachinidaeHunts Squash bug
Bristly, house-fly-lookalike parasitoids that lay eggs on caterpillars, beetle grubs, and earwigs — the maggot consumes the host from within. Adults sip nectar from shallow umbels and daisies.
Cure the fruit two weeks somewhere warm after cutting and the starches turn to sugar; a good butternut then keeps six months on a pantry shelf, which is longer than any other squash you can grow.
The Cottage Garden Companion — the gardener's herbarium at cottagegardencompanion.com