How to grow and harvest summer squash?

I have fond memories when I was growing up and summer was always very busy on our farm. We would be out picking different vegetables and just say one of the vegetables would be summer squash. Mom and I would cook some squash for supper, along with other different vegetables form our garden. We would cook our summer squash which was crooked neck, with some onion and a little sugar, water, and then cook it down. Yum!

Summer squash are easy to grow and the plants will crop a heavy supply of fruit all summer long.

Here I will like to talk about a few different varieties of summer squash. "Tromboncion" needs to always be harvested when the squash reaches to 12 inches long. Patty pan is a type of squash, which comes in white, yellow, green in colors. "Sunburst" can be picked as a young fruit or let it grow bigger before you pick it. "Rolet" is a baseball sized fruits that has a sweet tasting fruit.

In early summer is when we plant our summer squash seeds in our garden. We will s ow two seeds together, then water the seeds in well, and cover with a cut-off plastic bottle for each pair of seeds. In our garden now, I planted our summer squash seeds on a outside row because they grow like watermelon vines, they take up quite a bit of space. I also plant them in a space of 3-5 feet apart, and water them real good after planting.

Summer squashes should be watered well and they need to be fed regularly with tomato fertilizer. After I do this, I will mulch around the squash plants with a thick layer of compost or some other organic material. I do this, because the mulch will break down and will constantly release nutrients to the plants.

The majority of summer squash are of the trailing plants so I just leave them on the ground.

Squashes will take about for to seven days after they flowers start to wilt. If I want some of my summer squashes to be bigger, then I will leave them on the vines longer, and then go back out to the garden a few days later and then I will start harvesting my summer squashes.