Garden Mondays : This Week’s Winners Are. . . .

Summer is in full swing and the vegetables are starting to roll in.  It is an AWESOME time of year.  The moment of truth about how well you, the soil, the weather and all the little elements did to make either make your garden a winner or a loser this year.  So, you ask, how are my bets doing this year?.  Well, uh, it turns out to be a bit complicated – a mixed bag of winners and losers.

As of a few short weeks ago, my beds were beautiful.  They were green.  They were thriving. They were big. They were fruiting. We (my husband and I) were excited.  This year looked like it was going to be a winner all around.  Seriously, check this s*%t out, how could it not be a winner. . .

That far bed you see there.  That bed was the pride of the garden this year.  We’ve battled squash vine borers for years. By the looks of that bed, it would appear we won this years battle through carefully cultivated strong seedlings and hooped covers over our beds.

Every year, we plant a bed of squash. Some times it’s butternut or acorn or buttercup or pumpkin or summer or zucchinis. Every year, we stubbornly plant them.  And every year, the vine borer obliges us with devastation.  Yeah, I know, some wickedly smart scientist once offered some great wisdom about insanity and repetition, but sanity be damned, I WANT TO GROW ONE FREAKING SQUASH! One crown jewel.  One beautiful and prized little squash.

Seriously, is it too much to put my self worth as a gardener into one single growing squash?

So, what is this mystery creature, the vine borer you ask?  Ah, the Melitta curcurbitae is a tiny little 1/2-inch long wasp. They are very specific about where they lay their eggs -namely on OUR squash plants.  When the tiny little egg hatches, the emerging little white grub is so ecstatic to find itself born unto a feast of green goodness that it cannot help but eat its way into the heart of my squash vines. Our vines protest by dying and leaving us squashless.  Oh the circle of life.

So, by now, you’ve probably guessed it.  The vine borer defeated us yet again. Alas, this weekend, our beautiful squash and cucumber bed was reduced to this shambles.

Sure, we could have been proactive and sprayed of BTK weeks ago.  Sounds icky, but it is a recognized organic solution. But in our arrogance, we thought we had won this year. So, we didn’t spray.  Now, all we can do is dig the vine borers out of the vines, kill the the beast and hope the vine recovers.

Hold on a second, didn’t I mention that it was a ‘mixed bag’?  Didn’t I imply there was good with the bad?  Well, please do meet one of our crown jewels.

Before the beasts could hatch from their eggs, we did manage to harvest a tidy little crop.  We got perhaps a dozen or so patty pan and summer squash weighing in at a pound or more each.

And I have savored every bite of these beauties.

Of course, now I am greedy.  Next year, we will spray and we will do even better.  One or two or twelve will not be enough.

I wanted to highlight another winner this week – curbside broccoli.  I guess I will save that for next week!