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Vegetable Gardening

Winter squash vines growing roots

10 years ago

Some of my large winter squash plant vines started growing roots. I live in Colorado, where the soil is somewhat clayish and dry, so my first thought is that it did it to have extra points to uptake water/nutrients. If this is the case, will I hurt myself next year by trellising the vines, and giving them less of these contact points?

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Comments (2)

ltilton
10 years ago
That's what I've always figured, so I don't trellis squash or pumpkins.

Some people don't have the room to grow these crops any other way, but if I do, I let them root on the ground.
ceth_k
10 years ago
Every node on the vine(wherever the leaves sprouted) has the potential to grow roots. That is way weeding is so important so that the node touches the bare ground and not siting on some grass so that it can grow root there. If you could bury the nodes then it is even better, 'cause theoretically more roots will grow this way than simply letting the nodes sit on bare ground. What all this mean is that the more roots for the plant the faster the nutrient uptake. Many gigantic pumpkins are grown this way.
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