So we’re looking this morning at how to sow squash seeds. They’re quite a tough coated seed and quite chunky as well. Quite big depending on the type of squash you’re going to grow.

How to Sow Squash Seeds: Jumbo Pink Banana

This one’s called Jumbo pink banana, something we’ve not grown before. So we’re going to have a go at that. So with these, you can soak them for a couple of hours in warm water and all you need to do is get a little plastic container with a lid on it, preferably. And then however many plants you want to grow, I always set a couple of seeds extra because, whether they don’t germinate or whether something happens while they’re growing, whether you get frost or whatever, they might get attacked by slugs or snails. So I always prepare a couple of extra plants just for that eventuality.

So the best way to soak them for a couple of hours is to wrap them in a bit of kitchen towel however many seeds you want to grow and then just fold it up, take your lid off the container and then just fill that container with warm water. Not hot water, but with warm water. And the reason I put the seed in tissue is that when you put your tissue into the water, it’ll soak up the water and it’ll sink. If you put the seeds in without wrapping them, they tend to just float and they don’t generally get that wet. So once you’ve got them soaked and they’re in the warm water, just pop the lid on that.

That will just keep the temperature in there, the water a little bit warmer for a longer period and leave them in there for about 2 hours. And then you take them out. And what some people do and I’m going to do this without soaking them before I set them, it’s just to loosen the husk around the shell. As I say, it’s quite thick. It makes it a bit easier by soaking them because it softens it a little bit.

So you can use whatever implements you like. Just be careful. Obviously you don’t want to cut yourself, but you can use either a sharp knife, pair of scissors. I’m just going to use nail clippers. And what you do is there’s a flat end to the seed and a rounded end.

And all you want to do is just pinch off a little bit of the rounded end, little bits off at a time just to break that shell. And all that does is allows the moisture in into the husk of the seed, just taking little bits off at a time. So I don’t damage the seed inside. Yeah. You see a different colour.

How to Germinate Squash Seeds

You can actually see the hole in the shell itself. Some people, when they’ve soaked them overnight, they’ll actually peel that outer shell off. I think that’s just a bit too risky for me. I’d probably damage the seed itself so the seed should germinate like that now anyway. And then again, if you want to, you can wrap that back into your kitchen towel and just pop it.

We’ll give it a spray of water, so make sure it’s nice and wet, fold it up into a parcel, make sure you’ve got good contact on your seed, and then label a little plastic bag, pop your seed in your kitchen towel, make sure it’s all touching into your plastic bag.

And then if you fold that bag up, just pop that somewhere warm, maybe above a radiator or on a warm window sill, that should germinate in about five days. The beauty of it is, you can check it without disturbing it. If it’s in soil, you’ve got to dig it up to check if it’s germinating. But this method, all you do is unfold the kitchen towel and you can see once the roots, the roots should start to come out first. And once you get roots an inch, two and a half centimetres long, you can pop that into soil then.

How to Sow Squash Seeds in Pots

You can see that the husk is coming off and you see how tough and woody it is.

That’s come off nice now, so you can see I’ve broken into that one. You can see inside there is the actual growing part of the seed itself. So we’ve got an access into the inside of the seed. So I’m going to set those two. Now, just use these small pots.

They’re sort of three inches across and we’re going to set them individually because they don’t really like being disturbed once they start to grow, because they’re quite a big stocky plant and they have a big root system. So all you need to do, once you’ve got them established, is to pot it on from this pot into a bigger size each time and you’re not actually disturbing the root system. Another little thing is to set the seed on its side rather than lay it flat. If you lay it flat, they have a tendency quite often to rot. But if you lay it on its side, the water will drain away from it, and will keep it moist at the same time.

So all I do is don’t even need to make a hole, just push the seed in and it wants to go in about two centimetres down. Just cover that over with a little bit of compost, firm it down. Remember to label it and then give it a drink, give it a soak with water, obviously, make sure you’ve got drainage holes in, because the water needs to drain away. Pop it on a warm window sill or on a heated pad.

How Long do Squash Take to Grow?

We’ve set them now. So the second week of March, they’ll take from sowing to actually getting a squash, generally speaking, about four months. And again, if they’re summer squash, you’d be picking them so that the squash keep coming on the plant. If it’s a winter squash, you’ll allow the squash to mature on the plant and then you’ll take it sort of end of September-October time.

I believe that this one, jumbo pink banana, you can use it as both, so you can pick them small and use them a bit like a courgette, or you can let them mature and they’ll get really big and then they’ll get the tough skin on. Same with this one. This is a different variety called Tromboncino. The seeds are very similar, slightly smaller, slightly different colour.

So again yeah, they’re not quite as tough. They’re not quite as big. Yeah, they are very much like a pumpkin seed. Yeah so again the same process. Probably I’d just set these rather than nicking them or anything they’re not as thick skin. But if you want to be sure to get germination yeah, just nick them. Without nicking the skin, they might take 14 days 21 days to germinate, this way they might take five or seven so it’s just quicker.