Backyard Farming: Growing Winter Squash Vertically

As I've mentioned before, space is extremely precious in my garden. So precious that I pick, choose and plan everything to make the puzzle pieces fit together. This might make winter squashes like butternut squash, kabocha, pumpkins, etc. something to skip and just buy. However, not only am I fond of all of these, my wife absolutely loves winter squash. Last year, I had 1 single butternut squash plant that took over most of my garden, and actually choked out other plants.

So here I will show you how this year I have managed to grow 8 winter squash plants ( 4 varieties ) in about a 5 X 10 Foot area.

As you can see in the photo, the second wooden trellis is for winter squash. The ends of the trellis are wooden stakes I found at Home Depot for 79 cents a piece. I tied them together in tripod shape for stability and then added one across the top.

Here you can see that we transplanted 2 each of 4 different winter squash varieties. I also squeezed some White Wonder Cucumbers at the end near the walkway for easy picking. The varieties planted are:

galeux d'eysines

Kabocha

Whalthum Butternut

Native American Hidatsa

Here, you can see that as the squashes grew we tied nylon trellis netting to both sides of the frame and began training the plant up the netting.

Here they are again with a few weeks of training. Onces they cling on to the trellis, they support their own fruit really well. Here are some of the squashes: