I have some beautiful butternut squash I am growing in my garden. Unfortunately, my squash are being viciously attacked by cucumber beetles and are starting to be attacked by squash bugs. I don't know if the plants will make it through the rest of the season.
If a vine dies, or a whole plant dies, and the squash aren't ripe yet, is it possible to still ripen the squash? And how would I go about doing that?
In my experience, squash will ripen off the vine if their shelf life is long enough, but they will not get bigger (and according to many, the seeds may not, or will not, develop further). C. pepo and C. ficifolia certainly ripen further off the vine, anyway. (I've had Tatume squash and zucchini, which are C. pepo, turn orange after sitting in storage) I'm not sure about C. moschata (that's what a butternut squash is), but I would think it would ripen. Some varieties of squash take a lot longer to ripen off the vine than others. Tatume seems to start turning orange right away; C. ficifolia took about eight months to ripen in storage.
