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Roundabout this time last year....

6/11/2013

 
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.

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And then this happened. Overnight. Poof. Wilted. Gone.
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Online research (cause you can believe anything if its on the internet) pointed to a creature so gross it will cause nightmares. 
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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?
BUT LOOK!!!
There's baby squash growing!! Maybe I'll get a few this year after all.

(pat, pat, pat)
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May link
7/1/2013 12:06:40 pm

I feel your pain. This year we started our veggies late, but were so-oo excited about our beautiful Japanese eggplant plants and flourishing tomatoes and cucumber transplants. Nothing like eagerly going to visit the eggplant and tomato blossoms and young fruit to find them ravaged, attacked or just GONE. We have since identified a ground squirrel (main "perp") and caterpillars (we think) as the culprits. Vigilance, netting, and a "that's nature" attitude are in the gardener's toolbox. That and a bit of Scarlett O'Hara-isms: "Tomorrow is another day."


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    Kelley Creek Farms is a small (micro really) hobby farm located in Central Alabama 30 minutes south of Birmingham. We raise heritage and rare waterfowl and poultry along with a myriad of other creatures that give the farm its life. In addition to the birds, we raise heirloom tomatoes and vegetables.

    Each day is different and brings a new set of adventures. Some make you laugh and some make you cry. Some are just plain frustrating. But we persevere knowing that tomorrow's set of problems will be completely different than today. Still figuring all this out ....one day at a time and striving for a more sustainable way of life.

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