Bred for optimum flavor, the adorable honeynut squash is a delight to grow in the garden and produces an abundance of single-serve squash that cooks up beautifully and tastes great.
Fans of winter squash know the sad truth about the butternut: it’s an awkwardly cumbersome squash that we really want to love, but also falls short in ways that we don’t want to admit to ourselves.
Hello, honeynut squash! An intentional improvement, the honeynut solves butternut’s most annoying flaws: the honeynut actually tastes great, and it’s nice and small and unlikely to cause a knife accident in the kitchen.
Gardeners will love it, too, because while it’s still a viner — it is a winter squash after all — the vines are more compact, and you can easily grow several plants in an 8′ x 8′ space.
What is a Honeynut Squash? Is It the Same as Butternut Squash?
Honeynut squash (Cucurbita moschata × Cucurbita maxima) is a butternut squash cultivar that was bred specifically for flavor. See below for more info on how it came about.
Taste-wise, honeynut squash definitely has a bolder, more pronounced squash flavor. It’s nuttier and earthier, and also sweeter, but not in a sugar-sweet cloying way. It makes delicious pies and soups, as well as an amazing side dish when roasted.
More importantly — and I didn’t fully appreciate this when I first decided to grow them — honeynut squashes are smaller than butternuts. This is a very good thing. Buying butternuts at the store for a dinner of roasted squash is an exercise in guessing.
Butternuts come in all shapes and sizes and scaling a recipe up or down is a big question mark. Weighing the squash doesn’t help as much as we’d like, because it’s not possible to know how much of the weight comes from the bulbous seed pod and skin vs. the usable flesh in the often too-skinny neck.
The honeynut, however, is much more uniform in shape and weight, with a broad, hefty neck where the flesh lives (the rounded bottom is the hollow seed pod and contains little usable flesh). You can generally assume one squash per person because of its small size.
The squash in the photo above probably look huge, but they’re just a bit longer than my hand.
In the garden, the honeynut squash grows similarly in habit as other winter squashes: it’s a robust viner with big, beautiful leaves. It’s considered a “dwarf” variety, but you’ll still need to commit space in the garden for the vines — just not quite as much as when growing pumpkins or butternuts.
How to Plant / Sow
Honeynut squash, like most winter squash, can be seeded directly in the garden. I often get a head start by starting seeds indoors, but that’s completely optional and generally not encouraged. The sprouts are a little on the fragile side, so you’d need to take extra care when transplanting.
To seed outdoors, create mounds (aka hills) of soil about a foot wide and 4 to 6 feet apart in full sun. Sow two or three seeds per hill, an inch deep and several inches apart.
Firm the soil over the seeds and water well with a gentle sprinkle that does not dislodge the soil from the mound or flood out the seeds.
The seeds should germinate within two weeks. Once they sprout, thin to 2 plants per mound.
The plants in the photo above were started from seed indoors and transplanted to the garden on the day of the photo. That’s why there are no mounds around the plants in the photos.
Plan to grow a minimum of three plants. In a healthy season, you can expect three to six squashes per plant, but fruit quantity is not the only reason. You also need a sufficient number of flowers open at one time to produce pollinated fruit (more on this later). The more plants you have, the better.
How to Care for the Plants
Once the plants sprout and leaf out, you can apply a standard fertilizer once every couple of weeks. Early in the growing season, you want the plant to vine out quickly with a nice leaf canopy.
Winter squash are hardy plants and will grow quite happily and independently in areas with moderate rainfall. Their thick leaf canopy also shields the soil from the sun to efficiently preserve moisture.
If the leaves start looking a little droopy, water well, allowing it drain and not puddle.
The plants are disease resistant, although they can attract insect predators, such as stink bugs (which can do a lot of damage to leaves and leaf stalks).
Note that the squash leaves are actually variegated, with white patterns along the veins, which can look like powdery mildew. It’s noteworthy that, unlike every other squash variety I’ve ever grown, the honeynuts have never had powdery mildew.
I live next to a community garden, which means that just about every vegetable disease known in the Midwest thrives there and makes its way into my yard. No powdery mildew is a minor miracle.
How Do Fruits Form?
Like all winter squash, fruit is formed by a pollinated flower.
Honeynuts produce two types of flowers, male and female. They’re big and bright orange-yellow, shaped like a gramophone horn with a frilly edge.
The female flower produces the fruit embryo, while pollen from the male flower fertilizes the embryo, kicking it into growth mode.
At the beginning of the growing season, once the plants have sufficiently vined out, you’ll see far more male flowers — identifiable by the flower sitting atop a thin stalk, not a miniature fruit — than female flowers. This is nothing to be concerned about and is perfectly normal.
Because the plants rely on insects to deliver pollen from male to female, the plants produce more male flowers to give pollination its best chance.
This is also why you’ll want to grow a minimum of three plants (two is the bare minimum), all in the same garden plot. The more plants you have, the more flowers will be open at the same time and the better the odds of pollinating the female flowers.
The challenge here is that squash flowers are only open for a short time in the early mornings. So, you have to cross your fingers and hope that there are a lot of early-bird bees, ants, and others visiting the squash flowers while they’re open.
When the female flower has received enough pollen, the embryo (shown earlier) fills out quickly, plump and green, like the next photo:
When an abundance of flowers is present during the growing season, you can expect three to six squashes from each plant.
To learn more about squash flower pollination, read my squash pollination guide, which also covers how to hand-pollinate squash flowers, if the insects in your yard are laying down on the job.
Can Honeynuts Grow in a Container or Grow Bag?
Yes. Technically, they’re compact viners and should produce somewhat satisfactorily in a container with nutrient-rich soil. But, you’ll still need to provide ample room for the vines to stretch out and provide support for the growing squash, if the vines are elevated.
Grow at least two plants in each container because you’ll still need a sufficient number of male and female flowers open at the same time to achieve pollination.
Place the containers in an area with a lot of insect traffic, or plan to hand-pollinate the flowers yourself.
When Can You Harvest?
Young honeynuts have dark green skins for most of their growing season, which eventually ripen to a dark tan or burnished orange (or “honey” color; hence their name) after going through a mottled green/orange phase.
The photo above shows the color changes that the squash goes through while maturing. #1, 2 and 4 are the same squash. I included #3 because the coloring is so beautiful.
Keep an eye on the squash stem. The squash will be ready to pick when the stem is fairly dry. Use clippers to snip the squash from the vine. Do not pull the fruit from the stem, as that could rip the vine.
In the photo above, you can see in photo #4 that the squash is mostly orange, but it’s still not ripe: the stem is a very vibrant green. At this stage, the squash still has a few weeks to go before it’s ready to harvest.
Whatever their state, finish the harvest before the first snow flies, even if the stems aren’t quite dry. They’ll finish ripening off vine.
Can You Save the Seeds from a Honeynut Squash?
Honeynuts are hybrids – a cross between butternut (Cucurbita moschata) and buttercup (Cucurbita maxima) squashes – so future generations are not necessarily going to be the honeynuts you grow in the first year. They might be similar; they might be different.
There’s no way to predict what you’ll get, but you can always try if you enjoy experimenting!
It’s also important to note for seed-saving purposes, that squash plants can be successfully pollinated by any squash variety. So, if you’re growing honeynuts and zucchinis — or if a neighbor is growing, say, pumpkins — there’s no way to ensure that your honeynuts are being pollinated only by other honeynut flowers, unless you’re taking specific steps to protect the plants.
I’m sure you’ve seen bees with their legs covered in orange pollen. They can travel great distances and spread that pollen among multiple locations.
How Long Does Honeynut Squash Store?
Honeynut squash has a thin skin that does not protect the flesh as efficiently as butternuts. So, they don’t last quite as long in storage.
For storage purposes, let newly harvested squash rest in a coolish, dry, sun-protected area for a week or so. This hardens off the stem and helps the squash last longer.
In cool, dry conditions — such as an unheated basement around 55 degrees F — it’s reasonable to expect honeynuts to last 1 to 3 months. Discard if they show signs of wrinkling or mold.
They freeze quite well, though, so you can slice them in half, remove the seeds, chop them up and store them in freezer-safe containers through the winter.
Other Fun Facts:
Who Created the Honeynut Squash?
The honeynut squash actually has a long history, even though it’s only been on the consumer market for a few years.
The squash we know now was developed by Cornell professor and plant breeder Michael Mazourek, in consultation with chef Dan Barber. The goal, which Barber encouraged and supported, was to create a better-tasting and smaller version of the butternut squash.
The two continue to work together to this to improve the cultivar.
Can You Eat the Skin of a Honeynut Squash?
Yes! Unlike butternuts, which have thick, papery skin — that’s papery in texture, not fragility — that should be removed, honeynut squash skin cooks up tender and is easily cut with a knife, like the famous delicata squash.
If you’re a winter squash aficionado, I hope you’ll give the honeynut a try in your garden this year!
I hope you found this post helpful, and that it inspires you to grow your own edibles at home, expand your garden repertoire, or try a new technique. If you have any questions or comments, please share them below so that everyone can benefit from your thoughts, advice, and curiosities. Use the buttons above to share this information on your favorite social platform.
Welcome! I'm Karen, Chief Gardener, Tool Cleaner, Tomato Pruner, and Cabbage Worm Picker-Offer.
I bought my first ‘Honeynut’ squash at the Ithaca Farmer’s Market a few years ago. I purchased seeds on line the following year and they produced a zucchini type fruit. Last year, I used seed purchased directly from Cornell and harvested a dozen of the delightful squash. You described the flavor perfectly. I am really enjoying your posts.
Thank you so much, I appreciate you saying that, and also for sharing your experiences!
very informative article! My niece bought these at a farmers market in DC last year and raved about them. I found the seed online and my plants are doing great so far this year. I wondered about the ripening, and your photos are great.
They’re such lovely plants, I really enjoy growing them and cooking with the honeynuts. I’m glad the photos were helpful!
Karen
Thank you for this very succinct and informative post about the honeynut squash; I have been trying to figure out when to harvest them. We must be really lucky because ours came up as a volunteer in the garden; I bought a honeynut last fall, roasted it, composted the seeds–and voila!–in the spring, we had honeynut squashes in the garden! The oddest part is that the vine produced one *small* butternut squash early on, but the rest (that are still on the vine) are definitely honeynut squashes and look exactly like the photos you posted above. The weirdest part is that we are not growing butternut squash at all this year. I wonder if the lone butternut we have was pollinated by a traveling bee who happened to have previously visited a male butternut squash flower?? The mysteries of the garden!
That’s one of the things I absolutely love about gardening — the unexpected surprises. I overlooked a few parsnips at the end of one season, and they sprouted the following year with the intent of producing seeds (parsnips, like carrots, are biennials). I was curious, so I let the plants grow, and they were soon covered in aphids. But then … some ladybugs showed up and turned the plants into their own gigantic nursery. It was completely amazing, and someday I’ll write a post about it, as I have about a thousand photos lol. But none of that would’ve happened if I had just ripped those 2nd year parsnip shoots out of the ground.
Thank you for the very informative article!
I just bought my first Honeynut’s last week at my local Kroger’s. I honestly thought they were just tiny mis-marked butternuts until I googled them in the store. I had never heard of them before and I’m absolutely shocked and delighted that they have finally started getting in unusual squash varieties this year instead of just the same old Butternut and Acorn. I’ve steamed the first one in the microwave tonight and it was extremely tasty even without anything added to it! 😀
As I was scooping the seeds out I wondered if I could plant the seeds and be blessed with the same product. Yours is the fourth article I’ve read about planting these little guys and the first one to actually address that question. I think I will give a few seeds from my Honeynut to a friend who likes to experiment but for myself I will just buy a package of seeds. Because of the quality of information in this article I have decided to subscribe to your email. I look forward to exploring the rest of your website. 🙂
Thank you so much for your feedback! My Kroger carried them for a brief time this fall. I was so shocked when I saw the bin! Lol. I’m disappointed that they’re not spreading faster in the retail market, because they really are so superior to the butternut.
But I’m glad you were able to discover and enjoy them!
I will be growing these for the first time and only have 10×20 space in a community garden. I would like to grow these vertically so that I have room for other vegetables. I’m not sure exactly how to proceed; are supports placed when seeds are planted or when seeds have sprouted? I would like to use 3-panel tomato supports that can be used in different configurations but not sure if this is enough support.
I think you can do it either way. I would probably wait until the seeds have sprouted to place the supports so that you can adjust the configuration if a seed doesn’t sprout.
Make sure the panels are nice and stable. The honeynuts themselves are not terrible heavy, but by the end of the season the vines will be densely filled with leaves and a little weighty.
Hi Helen, I grew melons vertically this year on two 8 ft cattle panels, tied together on T-posts, so with a 10 x 20 garden, that should be OK for you. I would personally set them up first so you can place them optimally, then plant your honeynut squash seeds or starts very close to the panels, and train them up the panel from the get-go. I grew melons for the first time in my life, and I’m 74! I am also growing honeynuts (on the ground, but they would do well on a panel I think), and they look amazing so far. It’s Vermont, so they’re just getting mottled, and hopefully will have a few more weeks of non-freezing nights to fully mature. I would encourage you to use some ties to securely anchor the squash to the panels or fencing as it grows, and you should find it will adapt wonderfully. Good luck!
Length of the vines?
They’re pretty long! I grew them in a 10’x10′ space, and some of the vines just stretched across the space (so, 10 feet), but some grew long enough to start wrapping around the perimeter. Some also escape through the fencing and just kept on going lol. So, I’d say, on average, 10 to 20 feet long.
I live in the hot, dry southern AZ desert where the sun is quit brutal. I am learning to contend with it although planting times are different here over most other places. When would you consider the best time to plant these seeds in these conditions?
Squash can take some heat. I’m not sure about the brutal part though (isn’t it dipping only into the 90’s overnight this month? Whew. That’s a lot to take). I would plan for a growing season whenever the temps max out in the 80s. Would that be fall? … spring? Winter might be too chilly, although might not be terrible for actually planting the seeds, if January and February get sufficiently warm. But, you can also start the seeds indoors and the let the seedlings grow a foot tall or so before transplanting outdoors.
I did the same. Bought one at a farmers market. Saved the seed and planted this spring. I have a large area and they did well. I’ll have many of these baby butternut squash. I’m just wondering if I do save these seeds for next year , can I expect the same fruit for the coming year.
I’d like to clarify your article. I might have done it once, but I don’t see my comments here. Honeynut is not a hybrid, it is a stable, highly inbred or open pollinated variety. Initially, it was a cross of two species, but it was stabilized over many generations and is the species c. moschata. All to say, you can certainly save seeds if no other c. moschata isn’t grown in the same area.
To correct your clarification, the honeynut is most certainly a hybrid. Further, they’re continuing to develop the cultivar with additional cross-pollinations and one or more of its offsprings have reached market. There may have been one version of this cultivar that reached a sort of open-pollinated-like stability, but that was quite a few years ago and is not necessarily what consumer market seed producers are growing *today*, depending on their access to the study. I used to work for one of the major seed catalogers, and this squash was a frequent topic of conversation and interest.
Because of this ongoing development process, I’m not going to publish advice here saying, sure, save your seeds and grow next year. Because my last experiment with seed saving the honeynut in a protected environment resulted in a buttercup, which was not unexpected because it’s one of the hybrid’s parents.
I live in Coastal South Carolina. I have been growing butternuts for 3 years. Love them, but, every fall I get some type of pest that puts a very small hole in over half of my butternuts. I tried growing bags but it did not help. My local feed center is telling me there is no type of pesticide that I can use that they know of. Help!
Should these squash plants be pruned. They are going crazy all over the yard. A lot of flowers but not much fruit
If you can help it, I would not prune the vines. Winter squash, like butternut and honeynuts are meant to grow very long vines because flowers appear along those vines and give the best chance for fruit production. If you’re not seeing fruit, then you might have a proliferation of either male or female flowers (you need both), or successful pollination is not occurring between the two flower types. I have an article here on the blog that addresses pollination issues: https://sproutedgarden.com/hand-pollinate-squash/
I planted two seeds from a honey that I enjoyed last fall. The leaves look like honey nut plant, but this HUGE crawling plant has produced 12 fruits, and new babies are still forming. As they mature, the squash grew very large and round. Dark green with now some orange areas. I don’t know what in the world they are♀️ Help….
Honeynuts are hybrids so subsequent generations of seeds may or may not produce the familiar honeynut. Instead, its ancestor’s characteristics might be coming through in the squash you’re growing now. It’s hard to say what they are but it’ll be fascinating to see how they ripen!