Thanks Dave, they are both transplants and they've both become established in their spots. They've been there a little over a month.

The butternut I started indoors in March. So DTM for the butternuts should be now, however it was quite chilly up until now. The leaves were big and velvety. Since transplant, they've struggled but now are sprawling out, having crawled about 2.5' along the ground in the past month. I've gotten male seeds off it but no females as of yet. Many flowers primed to open, but they've remained closed buds.

The spaghetti squash were transplants, purchased from the nursery. They were healthy and had about 2 sets of true leaves on them when I bought them. An elderly neighbour requested I grow some and I couldn't afford to start them from seed. The spaghetti squash plants do have trendils turns out, but I imagine the fruit would be too heavy to trellis on anything but a solid structure which I don't have up, so they'll have to crawl also. I've not seen any flowers on those.

I just wonder if winter squash explode in growth like summer squash, which can easily grow bigger than desired if left a day or two too long, or if they're slow to ripen like tomatoes (in this zone).

Standard butternut (i.e Waltham) takes forever, and requires patience. Resist the temptation to harvest it and leave the fruit out there as long as possible until it is truly ready (probably 60+ days), or it won't taste very good. But the wait is worth it. I honestly wouldn't trust claims of fast maturing butternut... it is famous for taking so long... but who knows.

Butternut makes large vining plants.. they will take over if they are healthy, though I think there is one new bush variety. I have never grown spaghetti squash.

<I just wonder if winter squash explode in growth like summer squash, which can easily grow bigger than desired if left a day or two too long, or if they're slow to ripen like tomatoes (in this zone).>

Oh yeah, like Peter said, very slow to ripen. They will not grow as fast as summer squash but will reach harvestable size long before they are ready to be picked but you leave them to fully ripen. It is the ripening, the maturing that seems to take forever. The rind has to harden substantially and the stem turn brown and hard before you harvest.

Dave

I agree with Dave - wait for the stem to turn brown. It is the only way to know they are really ready. At least for the butternuts, I don't know about spaghetti squash.

As long it's only a light frost the winter squash are usually fine as long as they are mature. We usually get frost in September here the vines and immature fruit will die but mature ones are usually ok. We almost never have a field full of dried vines here. Our last place we typically had a middle of Oct frost date and did often see drying before the frost would hit. It will depend on your variety but just for reference my Spaghetti Squash is 70-115 days and my nutterbutter is 90 days total. The vast majority of the time is in the maturing of the fruit.