Last year, early June, I almost broke my arm patting myself on the back. "Good job" says I. "Fruits of your labor"....pat, pat, pat.
And then I was robbed. Robbed of the fruits of my labor and harvested ZERO yellow summer squash. Nada. A big fat goose egg.
This was a painful pill to swallow. Yellow summer squash in the south are as plentiful as mosquitos. They are a never fail, any idiot can grow them vegetable. Or so I thought.
To add insult to injury, the pumpkins suffered the same heinous death. Honestly, all was going so beautifully, and the plants were blooming and ready to produce their little bundles of joy. The garden was all green leaves and big POPS of yellow squash blossoms.
And then I was robbed. Robbed of the fruits of my labor and harvested ZERO yellow summer squash. Nada. A big fat goose egg.
This was a painful pill to swallow. Yellow summer squash in the south are as plentiful as mosquitos. They are a never fail, any idiot can grow them vegetable. Or so I thought.
To add insult to injury, the pumpkins suffered the same heinous death. Honestly, all was going so beautifully, and the plants were blooming and ready to produce their little bundles of joy. The garden was all green leaves and big POPS of yellow squash blossoms.
And then this happened. Overnight. Poof. Wilted. Gone.
Online research (cause you can believe anything if its on the internet) pointed to a creature so gross it will cause nightmares.
  | See? Nightmares. And just like potatoes, ya have to go digging around to find them. They don't live in plain sight, oh no. They bore into the stem of the plant and go to town on the all you can eat buffet until the plant is separated from its roots. Yea, you can water that poor wilted to the ground squash all you want...it's too late. |
So what's a poor squash deprived farm girl to do? I don't generally use pesticides, and how in blazes you would get poison into the assheads anyway is above my pay grade. They are in the stem--crimini!
Row covers? Oh go pollenate by hand cause bees can't do it for you now that you covered the flowers. Wrap the stems at the base with tin foil---seriously? Who has time for this?
The one thing I did do differently this year was add mulch/dirt to the stems of the pumpkins as they branched out. The yellow squash don't really "run" like pumpkin vines so the only thing I really changed there was ample tilling of the ground prior to planting which supposedly kills the grubs buried in the ground waiting to turn into moths which lay eggs which turn into heinous creatures to wreak destruction on your efforts and then bury into the ground again. See a pattern here?
Row covers? Oh go pollenate by hand cause bees can't do it for you now that you covered the flowers. Wrap the stems at the base with tin foil---seriously? Who has time for this?
The one thing I did do differently this year was add mulch/dirt to the stems of the pumpkins as they branched out. The yellow squash don't really "run" like pumpkin vines so the only thing I really changed there was ample tilling of the ground prior to planting which supposedly kills the grubs buried in the ground waiting to turn into moths which lay eggs which turn into heinous creatures to wreak destruction on your efforts and then bury into the ground again. See a pattern here?
| BUT LOOK!!! There's baby squash growing!! Maybe I'll get a few this year after all. (pat, pat, pat) |  |
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