General squash question, re. culling
 

Butternut Rugosa took forever to germinate and start growing, plants are large and thriving now with about 2 squash per plant and more coming, but with them starting so late I'm assuming I'm getting close to the cut off of whether anything that pollenates will actually mature before the season up here is don. Is there anything that I could/should be doing to encourage the probably survivors to grow as well and large as they can. How much time on the vine after reaching full-size do squash of this (or similar) variety need before they should be picked? Should I set a cut off date and remove any female flowers therafter, so the plants will feed the ones that have a chance to mature? Last year the weather was awful up here, didn't do Butternut Rugosa, but most of my regular butternuts last year didn't get fully brown and dried stems before the plants died down and frost was on its way. Thanks...

I don't know what the weather is going to do... Sure, it will get colder eventually, but the squash plants might get frozen in September or in October... Because I can't predict the future, I leave the plants alone to work things out as best as they can.

I generally leaves squash on the vine until the day before it freezes... Sure that's akin to prophesying, but it's a lot easier to guess what the weather is going to be like tomorrow morning than what it will be like weeks or months from now. Or I might let the first frost nip the leaves before harvesting the fruits. There is some risk there that the fruits will also get frozen, and then they won't keep. If I'm feeling wishy-washy about how cold it's going to get before morning, I'll sometimes cover the fruits with leaves, or towels.

I may also pick squash after the skin toughens... When I can poke my fingernail at it, and it doesn't penetrate the skin. They won't store well before that point is reached...

I'm definitely leaving on the existing ones until I have to pull them. I'm more wondering if I should be removing any new squash that form at this point so that the plant's resources go to feeding the existing squash vs. go to feeding smaller younger squash that have no chance of reaching maturity. I think only a handful last year were hard enough to store.