I would say probably don’t thin them, since in this instance it would be better to get two small fruits from two small plants than four or five large fruits from one plant. Every plant you’ve got will provide valuable genetic diversity, and right now that matters far more than quantity of seeds.
I have no idea about water or fertilizer. I’m planning to grow mine in deep mulch and water them only once a week. I have no idea if that’s the right approach. 
I am significantly behind the rest of you, but I just got an email saying that they’re shipping my seeds today. So I’m excited to try my hand at this and see if I have any luck getting them to grow!
Maybe I’m out of line jumping in here but I wouldn’t experiment with this guys seeds. Do whatever y’all think is the most likely to get this man his seeds back so that he doesn’t cut this organization off from doing this again. If you succeed enough to feel comfortable keeping 10% of the harvest then great.
Debbie in your instance, do you have space to pull one of those plants from each spot and transplant it? They might not like being transplanted but that would cut down on competition while still giving the transplants a chance.
As far as yellow leaves go and what not I would try the most conventional route possible. What does a conventional gardener do about yellow leaves? Research. Lack of nitrogen? Add nitrogen. From my experience with yellow leaves on squash plants they wanted both fertilize and water and then they grew new dark green leaves. Can you take a picture of the plants and post it here?
Don’t put all your eggs in one basket and over do things. If you’re unsure about something keep a control group.
I like that advice, Rylan. That seems excellent.
Yeah, carefully transplanting the smaller of the two in each hole is probably the best way to try to preserve the genetic diversity, while also giving each plant the space it needs.
It’s been unusually cold and wet in Utah the past month. Warm weather has now arrived. I expect the squash to thrive without any special treatments.
Squash love to grow crowded, it’s how they grow naturally. I experience poor results from transplanting any of the cucurbits.
So you’d recommend she just leave them all there?
You’re definitely an expert on cucurbits. 
Emily: My general sense of how life works, guides me to believe that human intervention typically does more harm than good. I don’t see what good can come from chopping off 90% of a plants root system, in order to move it to another location. The trauma of losing its root system far exceeds any difficulty caused by growing close to a companion.
For example: During the evolution of plants, nitrogen availability acted as a rate-limiting factor in their growth. Therefore, plants didn’t develop effective systems to prevent the uptake of excessive nitrogen. So when they encounter excess nitrogen, they just absorb it into their tissues, and the excess amino acids poison the plant. Then, they invite insects to eat their leaves in order to reduce the excess amino acids. Therefore, when people fertilize with nitrogen, they tend to create insect predation problems for the plants. Low-fertility agriculture minimizes pest pressure.
The unrestrained nitrogen absorption in most plants is very similar to how some extreme desert plants cannot stop themselves absorbing so much water that their succulent bodies split open. Those particular xerophytes never encounter enough water in the wild for this to be a problem.
I also totally agree on the negative effects of transplantation. As the amount of seed I have on hand increases I shift to direct sowing everything, even trees which vary wildly in establishment rate year to year. The end product is a vastly stronger plant. Some tree species like avocado are impossible to grow on our weird clay when transplanted out of pots, but direct sowed ones do fine. Growing a root system in a pot then transplanting it out is akin to growing a seedling tree in a fine mesh cage that twists all its stems around. Even after you remove the cage, the structure of the top growth will never be quite right again.
I retract my comments and defer to Joseph.
Thank you all for the input. I tend to agree with Rylan about doing what is necessary to get the plants to bear fruit. I’m tempted to give at least a couple of them a bit of fish emulsion, noting Joseph’s caveat about excess nitrogen. I hesitate to try to separate the plants for the reasons Joseph mentioned, which is why I mentioned thinning. But I will defer to Joseph and let them continue their cohabitation. The path of least resistance always wins with me.
Wow, love it.
Thank you, Joseph. This is all extremely good advice.
You have now convinced me to start directing sowing my banana seeds. I think there’s a good chance they will be happier plants that will adapt better if I put them where I want them from the very beginning.
Four outside the greenhouse and five inside have emerged. I think the chickens got one before I covered them.
A total of 16 germinated. One rotted, three are still possible.
That metal grate on top looks like a clever way to protect the sprouts from animals. What animals are you protecting them from?
My mom just moved to a new home that has a lot of deer and rabbits around. I’m wondering if something like that may be useful to recommend to her.
It’s just old wire shelving that was left in my garage. If the chickens see something new they’re going to nibble, and scratch, and dig. I took the milk jug covers off, so until the chickees decide these green things aren’t new any more they need a level of protection.
One shelf will stop them from scratching, but if they really want what is under there they’ll actually scratch the mulch out from under it. So I use two layers.
I am only doing this for things I have never grown before and I MUST get seeds.
That’s really smart!
Yeah, I know what you mean. I’m starting to think giving extra care to seeds you got from another climate (like most purchased seed packets) for the first year can make sense, so that you can get something to harvest to evaluate for traits you care about (like taste). Then, if you like it, you can save seeds from it that crossed with your stronger plants that didn’t need babying, and be harsher the next year. Sometimes things need to be worked up to gradually.
And of course, if you’re growing a seed crop for somebody else, extra care is very much warranted, especially if it’s precious or rare.
I’ve been growing out some of the black seeded ficifolia that @julia.dakin sent me and I am disappointed so far. They’re very weak plants. Many died out from the dry and hot weather we had for about a month and seemingly lack of fertility (yellowing leaves, slow growth). We’re now getting mostly daily rains and some which were not all the way dead are coming back slowly but the growth is dismal. No flowers yet and thus no fruits. I planted them in a range of conditions beginning in May through early June and most died out. The ones that survived seemed to prefer compost and enriched soil. It was at about 50 seeds. Good germination overall. I hope with this project I’ll be able to grow some stronger types in the future.
Oh, that’s disappointing!
My ficifolia accession from GRIN isn’t doing too well, either. The germination rate was great for old seeds – 11 out of 20 – but only three lived, and two of those three are now stems with no leaves. (Thank you, bugs.) The final one looks pretty decent, but it hasn’t grown a single new leaf in over a month. Even though I’ve been treating it with kid gloves and giving it water almost every day. I’m incredulous. Shouldn’t it be, like . . . doing something?
Maybe this is a particularly bad year for cucurbits, for some reason I can’t discern. Maybe I screwed up. Or maybe this accession just isn’t a great fit for my climate. I hope it’s the third one, and I hope that if it’s the second, I figure out what I did so that I can not do it again.
I wonder if perhaps they don’t like the heat? We had an unusually cool May and first half of June. The second half of June and July has been back to normal – 90-100 degree daytime temperatures, 60-70 degree nighttime temperatures, virtually no clouds or rain. Maybe they’re refusing to grow because they can’t handle 90+ degree temperatures with 12 hours of high elevation bright sun?
If I’d known, I could have planted them in the shade. The oca and potatoes are doing fine in full shade.
Mine are growing in a greenhouse, so I doubt it’s heat that’s the problem. They’re in the “creep” stage (sleep, creep, leap), so I expect I’ll see growth here in the next few weeks.
Cucurbits do that, hanging out with just a few leaves for what seems like forever and then leaping into explosive growth when you’ve given up hope.
