Soil improvement for poor-producing squash for next year

Question

I have two 8x4 raised beds that I grow various vegetables in, alternating tomatoes in one or the other with the other being squash, cucumbers, zucchini, pumpkin, and a few other vegetables.

This year, my squash and zucchini didn't really work out. Cucumbers were amazing, but I got only a couple of small zucchini and one or two small squash, no pumpkins. I had a ton of male flowers, but nearly no female flowers (none on the two Pumpkin plants, who constantly had 5-6 male flowers each, and one or two at the most on each squash). (I seem to always have either the Cucumbers succeed, or the Zucchini/squash, never both; I assume it's something related to how they like the soil. Sigh.)

My guess is I overshot on nitrogen in the soil, from what I've read; I tend to amend a fair amount of mushroom compost in each year, and perhaps I put too much in. (I'm mostly organic, I don't tend to use any -icides or fertilizer other than compost). From what I've read, too much nitrogen leads to only male flowers.

What can I do now (in the fall) to make it so the soil is a better balance next year? Will it likely be better simply by using up the nitrogen to grow this year, and I simply can amend less or no compost? Or is there something I can do at this point to help it out, that's ideal to do in the fall?

(Of course, I'm going to swap beds next year, but I tend to treat both beds the same, so I'm assuming the tomato soil will similarly be high-nitrogen, unless tomatoes and peppers eat up a lot more nitrogen than squash/peas/cucumbers).

If it's relevant, the beds are 8x4 feet, with probably 1-1.5 feet of soil depth, and I tend to add about six bags of compost each - 1.5 cu ft bags, roughly - every year.

Answer 1

I had a similar problem with squash this year. In my case the problem was a dry early summer when insects, mostly striped cucumber beetles, attacked the young leaves. As a result the plants were never able to achieve a decent size and start producing female flowers until it was almost too late for any fruit to mature. This year after re-sowing three times I had six fruits where I normally have about 200. This despite my best efforts to insert well germinated seed into rich hills and provide water. Too many beetles which left the leaves skeletonized.

Keep a close eye on your young plants and watch how the leaves develop. It's a critical stage. My strategy for next year will be to ignore all the old garden tales about not transplanting squash from pots and raise good seedlings in pots in a protected area and only plant out once they have reached a decent size. By that time the beetles will not be numerous enough to prevent the seedlings from taking off.

As for compost, the more the merrier.