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Optimism opens the door to great things.

When your entire life is steeped in white supremacy, equality feels like discrimination.

A snarling mass of vitriolic jackals

Hot air and ill-informed banter

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Balloon Juice has never been a refuge for the linguistically delicate.

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You are here: Home / Garden Chats / So the Squash Did OK This Year

So the Squash Did OK This Year

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So the Squash Did OK This Year

That’s half of it. All of that is from four spaghetti squash plants and two butternut squash plants and two musk melon plants that I planted late. I have a very elaborate system to make them produce that much. I plant them, put a trellis down on top of them, and then fuck off for three-four months. This year the spaghetti squash was so aggressive it climbed the trellis, went over the fence into the neighbors yard and grew a half dozen on that side. Ridiculous. Whatg I love most about this is that I am going to put them all in the basement and they will be fine until I use them all up, usually sometime in May.

Reader Interactions

27Comments

  2. 2.

    Starfish

    Like the willow tree, they are far too close to the house. Maybe you can ding-dong ditch them on a neighbor’s porch?

  4. 4.

    JPL

    The first two years that I grew sweet potatoes, I had over a hundred lined on paper in my shed.   Then the bunnies came, and the bunnies told their friends, then I just gave up.

  5. 5.

    frosty

    Squash is one of the ones that grow well in my Square Foot Gardens. Tends to spread out on the lawn* but that’s OK.

    * It’s green, can’t say it’s grass though.

  7. 7.

    dexwood

    Farmer John taking care of business. My squash and Armenian cucumbers were complete failures this year. I blame the intense, weeks long 100 degree days we had here in the high desert of New Mexico in July.

  8. 8.

    BeautifulPlumage

    Mmmmmm spaghetti squash and butternut squash.

    But what actually are the musk melons? I always thought they were similar to cantaloupe so wouldn’t store long?

  10. 10.

    Eyeroller

    My cucurbits all die from fungus before producing much or anything.  I am now officially giving up.  No particular motivation anyway anymore.

  11. 11.

    steppy

    We have a volunteer butternut squash plant growing out of our compost pile and I have no idea how many squash we are going to get out of it. I do know it’s a bunch of them. What’s better than free food?

  15. 15.

    Anonymous At Work

    Don’t forget the love of your neighbor for either not knowing or not caring for a bunch of vines growing over their fence and into their yard too.

  19. 19.

    wvng

    What a great haul. We did well last year, but this year a groundhog decided we didn’t really need squash.

  20. 20.

    Sure Lurkalot

    Always gotta be one and I’ll just raise my hand to leave.

    Squash, blech. I make myself eat the summer stuff (grilled is good, zucchini bread) but winter squash, just can’t do, texture thing mostly.

  22. 22.

    Jay

    @Eyeroller:

    Take a 2 year break, let the mold spores die with no food, then try again. Crop rotation prevents specific plant diseases from becoming endemic in the soil. Quite often, plant diseases result from “splash”, rainwater or sprinkler water splashing soil up onto the plant. Bottom watering and protecting them from rain with a clear plastic covering or a cloche often helps.

    (Here, tomato fungal diseases are endemic, so the rule of thumb is bottom water, mulch, cover, never compost diseased plants, make your own compost because the City stuff that’s dirt cheap, often contains composted infected plants),

  23. 23.

    bbleh

    @Eyeroller: @steppy: @Jay: you can also move the location of your garden, so you’re no longer planting in spore-infected soil.  However, for many people that’s not an option or not desirable, so another thing you can do is get these simple, cheap, plastic photoelectric thingies that you stick in the soil and that heat the soil using electricity from the photoelectric cells, and the heat kills the fungal spores — turns out many are sensitive to just a small increase in soil temperature, as long as it goes deep enough.

  25. 25.

    J R in WV

    A beautiful line up of melons and squash. I’m not crazy about squash, but if it’s what you grew, go for it.

  26. 26.

    Gvg

    Squash borers get most of mine. I need to get serious about some bio control. This was not a good crop year for anything. Very dry spring and summer. Now we are getting our rain, late and….more kinds of fungus than I have ever seen. It’s getting kind of weird. Most veggies died and what didn’t was severely stunted this year. I shall do soil improvements this winter. That always improves things.

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