Your friend is right. Blue Hubbards are huge and usually need around 100 days after setting fruit to maturity. You'll probably have female flowers soon.

A better question is do you feel alright? Eating unripe fruit can be unsettling.

Thanks you guys.

The truth is, we didn't get sick from eating it. My friend said the same thing, that eating unripe stuff upsets your stomach.

I guess now it's time to go eat a bushel of green apples....

Pick when stem attatched to squash dries up and cracks a bit.

Skin color dulls.

Skin is hard and resists a fingernail.

Winter squash cannot over ripen, but sure tastes horrible when under ripe, so if in doubt do not pick it.

Winter squash is not like summer squash. You don't pick it when you like the size of it. Summer squash is eaten in the immature stage. Winter squash is totally ripe so you can eat the squash and save the seeds.

Winter squash should also be cured at least 10 days in the sun or warm house if frost is predicted. This makes them sweeter, and last longer. I set my squash on the counter for months. They gets sweeter with time.

Don't worry, I picked my winter squash early my first year too.

Baby Blue Hubbard, we hardly knew ye.

The ones that I've grown were always at least 10-12" long when ripe.

Does this apply to Delicata squash, too? I have a huge patch of volunteers and picked one last weekend. The seeds were immature but the flesh tasted nice in a soup.

This thread's been dead a long time but here I come. I picked two Hubbards because squash borer got the vine and I was worried they were just going to rot out there. They are dark green on the outside and getting darker sitting on the counter but I dunno how long they'll last. I'm wondering if anyone knows a good way to use an unripe one; I read somewhere baking, like zucchini bread, works for some unripe winter squashes? Any advice?

You can eat winter squashes at any stage. They're good eatin' when they're small and tender much like a summer squash. You can do this with squashes that you might want to thin off because they don't have time to ripen or you want the others to be able to ripen better. Eat them when they're small and tender and use them just like you might use a zucchini. Now, if you wait til they're hard and have seeds but aren't ripe, they won't be harmful but they might not be very pleasant to eat either.

I am wondering about my Hubbard. About 75% of the stem is brown and it has quit growing....it is not that big, really.... but the vine is drying out and the leaves wilt more and more every day. Other vines on my other Hubbards are looking good and I have a baby on another vine about the size of a baseball but I don't know about frost which should be mid October to early November...They have a greenish bluish cast.