I. love. squash. All kinds. I love the different shapes and colors and textures and I love eating them. I love it when the plants are big and healthy and beautiful.
Unfortunately, for an organic grower in Arkansas, big, healthy, beautiful squash plants do not last long. Squash is without a doubt one of the most difficult vegetables for me to produce consistently throughout the summer. We massively overplant in the spring to ensure that enough plants will live long enough to get a decent harvest off of them. This means that for a short time we will have squash coming out our ears until things level off as the bugs and disease take over. At some point in time (usually July 1st around here) the battle overwhelms us and the combination of squash bugs, blister beetles, cucumber beetles, squash vine borers, bacterial wilt and wet rot win the war and the last of our plants are pulled and fed to the goats. This year, after a month of no squash I went ahead and started squash seeds again on August 1st. The result is beautiful, tender, bi-colored zephyr squash.
Considering that every cucumber beetle on our place has been drawn to this patch of squash, we'll see how long they last. For now though we're in the squash again. To Hillcrest tomorrow.
pretty!
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