Butternut squash and seseme seed soup.

[patR]

Peel and chunk a large squash, drizzle with good olive oil, and scatter two good hand fulls of seseme seeds over top and roast in a med oven till squash is lightly browned. Seeds will be nicely toasted.

Meanwhile in a heavy bottomed pan, saute a med onion in olive oil, till golden brown, then add roasted squash and seeds , making sure you get all the nice crispy bits... add a good pinch of dried thyme, cover with water plus an inch... add a vegtable stock cube, and simmer for ten mins...

Blend till smooth with a hand wizzer, add a sprinkle of seseme seeds on top if you wish... yummy with soda bread...

[Green Aura]

Sounds delicious.

[patR]

It is, Ive tons of butternuts this year, we harvested about 140 ish... and big ones too... there is only so many you can eat though....'what would you like with your squash tonite then sweetheart'.... heheheh
But at least we wont go hungry...

[Green Aura]

I'm quite

I've never managed to produce a good butternut squash yet - I've tried in the greenhouse, outside, take off all but a couple of flowers, leave them all on - I've had a couple of sizeable ones but they've just not seemed to ripen.

I've not even bothered up here although we did try some acorn squash - still no success!

[patR]

here they ripen by mid july, I start picking them then and put them up on the terrace to cure, picking them makes the plant keep producing... what happened with yours? do they not fertilise or is it just too cold..

[Green Aura]

I don't know - we always used to follow the "do everything a couple of weeks later in the North" philosophy. But since we've been up here we've started doing everything much earlier to make the most of the really short growing season. Maybe if we'd done that before we'd have got some decent squash.

[patR]

suprisingly I have to plant seeds a little early for squash too as although our summer is hot, we live a little high up a hill and get suprising amounts of frost, till mid april, so I grow them on plastic cups till its time I can plant out, if I had to wait Id never get any either...
do you actually get plants? do they flower? do the baby fruit drop off.... whats the actually problem...?

[Green Aura]

We've not grown any up here. Down in Manchester we got lovely healthy plants with several babies. Most dropped off and the one's left didn't amount to anything, another year we tried taking most off and just leaving 2-3 on and got small but usable sized squash, which just stayed greeny coloured. I'm actually wondering if they were just a variety that didn't have the lovely coloured skin you see in supermarket types.

Up here the squash we have tried to grow just got mildewed but I think that was because the leaves kept getting wet, that didn't seem to be a problem in the greenhouse but up here we're growing in a polytunnel so maybe the conditions are different.

I don't know . We'll probably have another go at some point, but it seems such a waste of space to only (possibly) get 2-3 squash from

[patR]

If your fruits were setting and then dropping off, its down to lack of nutrients, they are such heavy feeders, same probs as with pumkins and courgettes. Ive an old gardning book that told me that... try tipping your wood fire ash on them too... lots of potash..they love it...

[grahamhobbs]

If you are not having success with Butternuts, make sure you are using seed bred for your climate. Butternuts you buy in the supermarkets are most likely F1's developed for hot countries, so you will not get good results with seed saved from them. Once you've got a good variety, I do well with Hunter and Waltham, then you can save yoour own seed.