squash surgery

We tried the surgery to salvage the squash last night. I don't really care about the zucchini plant but I will be sad to lose the galeux d'eyesines squash. I'm excited to try them, and I was really hoping to be able to give a few to friends and family. They travel better than tomatoes or spinach. So we're going to do what we can.

leaves wilting like this is one of the signs of squash vine borer larvae in your plant.

Galeux d'eyesines squash with evidence of squash vine borer larvae damage near the root - see the orange sawdust-like substance? That shouldn't be there.

zucchini with same stuff

We went outside with a small knife, the bucket of water, toothpicks, and gloves. My spouse used the knife to cut vertically above the holes where we could see the orange strawdust-like substance that squash borers produce.

The plant felt pretty strong - it was actually difficult to cut into, which is good news (less damage so far). But, we couldn't find any caterpillars (squash borers at larvae stage). We moved on to the zucchini - same thing.


When he cut into the last plant, the second winter squash, we found about a dozen teeny-tiny caterpillars. I really couldn't even see them from where I was standing - they were about the size of a short grain of rice. We also found one large one, about an inch long. He would scrape them out, then drop them in the bucket of soapy water. The toothpicks came in handy here, since they were so small it was hard to get them with the knife. After he had scraped everything rotten out of the plant, we declared the surgery over and I put a shovelful of rich dirt on top of the wound. This makes the plant more likely to live through the harrowing experience.

photo of an out-of-focus small borer larvae on a toothpick.

Now that we'd seen them, we went back to the other two and tried again. We still couldn't find any on the zucchini but we found a few on the other winter squash plant. They made it through the night without collapsing, but I expect it will take a few days to know if they really lived through the surgery. And of course we have no idea if we got all of the borers or not. I was noticing a few other places I thought we should check, so we might be performing surgery again tonight...

Update: the plants all lived through the surgery, but we didn't get all the borers. I think the problem was that the plants were so big by the time we did the surgery, and the roots were so stocky and thick that we just missed them with our cut. It's also possible that new eggs hatched. Twelve days later the second plant died, which was the one with the big fruit on it. I do not expect the third plant to live because it had serious damage and I had to remove the main root. The photos below show the borers and the shredded roots a little better. But, it's still there two days after these photos were taken and the plant is still alive, so maybe there is reason to hope.




If I plant squash again, I will use an aggressive strategy to prevent the borers. They seem like a more serious problem to me because they completely killed two of our plants before we got any produce from them. At least with the squash bugs there's a better chance that you will get to collect a little on all of your hard work. I will use trellising, wrap the base of the plant in foil, put out yellow pans filled with water, sprinkle diatamaceous earth, and spray neem oil. At this point I am not sold on row covers - they seem like more trouble than they're worth because they also keep out pollinators. I haven't heard good things about them from the forums I've read.

I might wait a few years before trying squash again in hopes of discouraging the borers from hanging around my garden - but then again, there was no garden in this spot for several years so I'm not sure this will help. The only reason I'm still considering this is that I'm certain the yard was sprayed using artificial chemicals, probably excessive amounts in last two years. I think it's possible that in the process of transitioning this space of land from conventional to organic, I've been hit hard with insects that were being suppressed unnaturally and unsustainably prior to us. I don't actually know if this is how it works but it seems plausible.

tomato update

On June 30th, the romas and cherokee purples had blossoms, though the brandywine did not. Every single one of the tomato plants seems to be growing well - a nice surprise since there were several I didn't think would survive, but I planted anyway because I had the space. We were starting to get several little tomatoes on the two tomato plants i purchased, which were more mature than the ones I started from seed.

Two weeks later, every single plant has little tomatoes on it! Way more than I can count. And, I've already harvested one early tomato from one of the plants I purchased. It was DELICIOUS! There is nothing like the flavor of the first tomato of the season.


My only two concerns at this point are continuing to stake the plants up as they grow larger and heavier, and canning the tomatoes - I'm worried they will ripen at a pace that will have us continually canning a few quarts rather than doing a big session, as I would prefer to do. Oh, and we will be out of town for 10 days in August and I don't want them to ripen while we are gone!

Lesson learned:)

Some things I've learned about beans, particularly pole beans:

Thin them before they begin to vine!!!!!!! Sure, we probably should've known better - but we're busy and it didn't seem like a big deal until I'd spent four hours of a Saturday gently (read: s-l-o-w-l-y) and methodically unravelling bean vines. Since we hadn't installed the trellising system yet, they had nothing to wrap themselves around except each other. It was painstaking work - but the good news is, since it's been several weeks since this happened, we know it didn't damage any of them. I was worried because some of them broke, and some of them looked very wilted after the whole ordeal. But they bounced back. It was like unraveling a huge ball of delicate chain necklaces that all look exactly the same. I wish I had a picture of how inter-twined the vines were, but I was too focused on the task at hand.

The other thing - stay on top of the weeds. Once we installed the bird netting, we weren't able to weed...and once we took the bird netting off, we prioritized thinning the beans over weeding, for better or worse. Then the beans got too tall to reach in and weed, particularly with the trellising in the way. This is one of the biggest changes I would make next year - I think I would have spent less time weeding overall if I had made more of an effort early on to hoe the small weeds. I would also use bark or grass clippings or some sort of mulch, to suppress the weeds. On the beds we prepared and planted later, we've done this, and it's made a PHENOMENAL difference.

By the way, all of the beans that we thought were bush beans have turned out to be bush beans. This is a relief, since I was worried about trellising in an earlier post. And although I'm irritated that the cannellini beans are bush instead of pole, it hasn't caused any practical problems.

seed order

I order seeds last weekend, during a blizzard. It was so much fun to think about tasty tomatoes and tall beanstalks while the snow swirled around outside!

Johnny's seed catalog had a really good reference - a table that estimated how much of a given vegetable would grow in 100 ft of bed space. Because of that, I realized that allowing 70 ft for green beans was way too much and was able to re-devote 50 ft of that space to growing dry beans! I'm really excited for this - I don't think they're commonly grown in home gardens, so I didn't think about them until I noticed them in the seed catalogs. We eat a lot of beans and we were able to pick out heirloom varieties that you can't find in the store.

We decided to purchase tomato and pepper starts from our farmer, but we will still be starting celery from seed. This is the only vegetable we will start indoors and then transplant. Since we are growing food to preserve and eat over the winter, we are not concerned about extending the season. Maybe next year? It depends on how this experiment goes!

I ordered from two different companies, just to keep it simple. One of the companies shipped our seed order yesterday, so we will be getting the celery seeds to start soon! I'm going to start a batch in egg cartons when they show up, and we'll see how that goes. They send a crazy amount of celery seeds (probably because they are so difficult to grow) so if the egg carton batch doesn't thrive, we'll have time and seeds left to step up our efforts with the next round.

I am getting SO EXCITED for the growing season!!

A Garden in Pictures, 11/6/10

I'm out of town this weekend for a yoga conference so I won't be doing any work on the garden, but here are the pictures after our progress last weekend.

The fence is built and includes a wonderful gate.

The bean beds are ready (the back row); they include about 1" of compost followed by 4" of chipped leaves, and are covered by tarps.

The strawberry and broccoli bed is ready (front row on the right); it includes about 4" of chipped leaves followed by a smattering of compost on the line where planting will happen, then covered by tarps.

Cardboard boxes are down over many of the walking paths. Most of the paths are 2' wide, but the main path is 3' wide. We plan to put bark or hay down on top of the walking paths, but it is a low priority.

Next weekend we should be finishing up the front row (watermelons, celery, and asparagus) and the second row (carrots, onions, and spinach). Those rows will be planted earliest in the spring. Then at our next available weekend, whether that is in the middle of winter or not until spring planting time, we will finish the 3rd and 4th beds - which will house potatoes, peppers, tomatoes, and squash.

last farmer's market tomorrow

I learned in the middle of this week that tomorrow is the last farmer's market of the season. They won't start up again until early June. I'm sort of feeling a sense of panic! We missed the market last week because when we got there about a half hour before close, everyone had left early. The weather was pretty bad and there weren't enough customers.

The only farmers who do a winter CSA do meat only - no veggies. But things like onions, carrots, and potatoes store well over the winter. They don't even have to be processed. I don't actually know how to store them though - that will be part of the learning next year. Anyway, I wonder why no farmers here offer this service? Maybe they think people only do CSA's for fresh produce and that people won't be willing to pay for local storage crops. A few farms in Eugene offered this, but only to CSA customers - so you wouldn't even hear about it if you didn't know the right people.

I guess this is when I should say to myself that the costs of going through winter without veggies outweigh the good. When the only option is not good for my health, maybe it's time to just buy produce flown in from South America. Or at least buy more frozen vegetables this year. But studies show that the longer you wait to eat vegetables after they're picked, the more nutrients they lose. And they really don't taste as good. So maybe I'm not missing that much. I will miss the farmer's market potatoes. They are truly in another world from conventional potatoes!

The Veggies

Following is the current plan for the garden. Times to plant are approximate...I still have much more research to do! FYI, we are in zone 6.

Sowing indoors for transplant (early february):
tomatoes
peppers
broccoli
melons

seeding direct in early spring (early April):
onions
spinach
carrots
strawberries (seedlings)
asparagus (will not be able to harvest this year)
celery (notoriously difficult to grow, but I really love it so I will try anyway!)

seeding direct after date of last frost (early May):
summer squash
potatoes
green beans

late summer seeding for fall crops (early July):
carrots
squash
broccoli
celery
potatoes
spinach
tomatoes

soon I will post pictures of the garden space and my space plan...