squash update and new trellis

Although I said I was giving up on the squash, you knew I wouldn't be able to totally do it. I'm not inspecting the leaves the way I was, but I did decide that if the plants were trellised, it would be easier to find and remove bug eggs. My spouse and I together designed this tent-style trellis that will be easy to store and easy to put up next year. The squash plant seems to love it - though I did have to uproot some of the areas where it attached, it has grown quite a bit since we put the trellis up.

This is the trellis, modeled by two watermelon plants.

I'm considering trying to grow squash again - just once more. If I do, I will be extremely proactive about insects and I won't add any new vegetables, so I can focus my attention and energy on successfully growing squash. I know now the importance of checking your garden every day - I would train the squash (so it didn't grow through the neighbor's fence), inspect it, put out insect traps, etc.

However, the squash plant that had the large fruit set on it is officially dead. It was looking pretty bad near the root, but one of the vines still looked strong, so I put extra dirt around its root and gave it some water in hopes that it would become the new root. Each day it looked worse and today, the large fruit had fallen off. It's been 10 days since we performed squash surgery, so I don't know if the plant died because of the surgery or because we didn't find all of the borers. The other plant that we found about a dozen small borers in looks really good - for now - though it doesn't have any fruit set.

The zucchini is still growing strong and we've harvested several. A summer squash that I planted later is growing slowly - maybe it is working on its roots or maybe it doesn't like the heat wave we've had.

(7/28)

re-doing the bean trellis

The bean trellis failed on us - after it broke in the wind storm, my spouse propped it up with extra support, but a few weeks later the bamboo poles were completely falling over with the weight of the beans.

He went and bought relatively inexpensive wood and built a taller, stronger trellis. He built the frame without using his saw, he just screwed the wood together and braced it using string to the fence and to the ground using stakes. Then he tied string between the old top and the new top. At this point, it really seems impossible to undo the strings, so hopefully the bean vines will figure out that they have new room to grow up.


I really like the way it looks, and it's easier to walk around when I'm doing japanese beetle duty. I don't have to duck under six strings, there is only one that is in my way now. We only spent about 30 bucks on the wood and twine, and we should be able to unscrew the wood to store it over the winter. The photo above was taken a few weeks after the new trellising was built - as you can see, the beans quickly vined to the top of the new trellis. I think it's about eight feet tall - I can't reach the top leaves for picking japanese beetles.

It is important to me to garden inexpensively, and this seems like a good option for beans. Ideally we would have had a plan for this last fall and we could've been on the lookout for something free, something re-used...but it is what it is. We also should have switched the new, taller trellis more quickly - the vines wrapped around each other into huge clusters that are really hard to pick beans out of.