Heather, from the picture, I can't tell how the plant is doing. But the little squash is not going to mature. Now, this is not necessarily something to be alarmed about. Most of the time, when a squash is beginning to flower, it will abort a good many little fruit, before it starts to hold and mature them. So, how does the plant itself look? Is it nice and green? Any wilting?

George

Tahlequah, OK

George,

The rest of the plant is lush and green with no other problems. I've been pretty vigilant about keeping up with pests and diseases. This is the first fruit that appeared so far. I'm hoping this doesn't become a constant thing.

I doubt that it will. It is quite normal that the plant abort a good number of fruit before it finally starts holding and maturing them. So, as long as the plant looks good, hang tight. It will work out in the end.

George

Heather, After you remove the bad fruit and discard it, just watch and see what the next fruit that form do. They should form and develop normally.

My experience is the same as George's---that early squash fruit that do form sometimes fail to develop, then turn brown and fall off the plant. This is particularly common in cooler or wetter weather. It can happen for various reasons----the plant is too immature to carry fruit to development yet, the weather is adverse, incomplete pollination occurred and other assorted issues. In May, several fruit on my summer squash plants got choanephora rot caused by fungi that thrive in wet soil, and you know it was horrifically wet in May. Near the end of May as the rain slowed down and everything dried up a little, the fruit that formed grew and developed just fine. I seldom see choanephora rot here because we usually are a lot drier, but it is really common on my plants in wet years.

Too much rainfall can really hurt the plants because it clogs the roots with water and the clogged roots cannot take up nutrients from the soil. When this happens, the fruit often fail to develop properly. Once the soil dries out, everything tends to return to normal. The nice thing about winter squash plants (particularly the ones that are C. moschata) is that they will grow and produce until frost, as long as the SVBs and diseases spread by squash bugs don't get them. You've got months and months left for healthy plants to produce a nice harvest.

I'm going to link a page from the TAMU Cucurbit Problem Solver. It is their fruit problem page----and I seldom see more than a couple of fruit with any of the horrible disorders shown on this page. Still it is nice to have the page handy as a reference in case you continue to see issues on the fruit.

Dawn

TAMU Cucurbit Problem Solver: Fruit Disorders