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Thursday, July 28, 2016

The year of the squash

OK I'm gobsmacked by the squash this year.  Some years the squash do better than other years, but I've never seen squash with this much vigor.  Every day I walk around the squash bed with pruning shears and clip off vines that are shooting into the yard.  This morning I removed vines that are climbing the bean trellis and growing over the sweet potatoes. 

These Teksukabotu vines climbed the trellis and went above it.  The top of the leaves, which are huge, are about seven feet high.

And here's a Teksukabotu squash on the trellis.  This one has a very long stem.

I planted two Golden Nugget squash plants.  One of them succumbed to the borer, but this one is doing well.

Four of the six plants are butternuts, Metro PMR from Johnny's.  I've always had good results with this squash.  These are growing on the trellis

It's a real vining squash, and there are butternuts all over the bed.  With the dense foliage they are hard to see.  The oat/field pea cover crop made a nice mat of dead vegetation that keeps the 'nuts from touching the soil.

When I dug up the potatoes a week ago the butternuts were vining over and under the potato plants.  I pushed the squash vines out of the way and dug up the potatoes, then laid the vines over the potato patch.  They've suffered a little damage but have already climbed the trellis and set some butternuts.

It's not just squash that are doing well this year.  Peppers, okra and green beans are also having a good year.  This is no surprise as the weather has been excellent for growing hot weather vegetables.  For some reason the cucumbers are not having a good year.  These are things I will never understand.

3 comments:

Phuong said...

Your squashes are doing fantastic. So exciting, they are great to have during the winter. Your pole beans look like they're doing well, too. I probably plant my squashes and beans too close together.

Margaret said...

Wow - a good squash year is an understatement - that's like squash on steroids! Good thing that most of them store so well :)

Amanda said...

Wow. Your squash are amazing. I'm down in GA and my cukes are doing terrible this year also. Btw. I've just found your blog and love reading it.

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