Tag Archives: squash

Beautiful disorder.

I remember worrying about tidy rows. Organized rotations. The choreography of organic vegetable gardening.

I know, now, that milkweed and potatoes can be friends with a volunteer squash sidling up.

Or that an asparagus crown doesn’t mind a four-year-old beet over its head with a pin cushion to the side and lettuce and onions all down the bed.

One more week and the garden isn’t mine. I picked a lot of carrots today.

I am crossing my fingers the seeds from the brassicae will be ready by Monday. I will gather them however they are and find out in a few months if they were ready.

I need to research asparagus crowns. Mine started as seeds in the laundry room years ago and I don’t want to upset them through my ignorance during their removal and transport.

Anyone remember when I planted the potatoes, by chance? I think, sadly, they still have a month to go but perhaps you know differently.

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Umm…oops?

This summer I tried to start my fall veggies indoors in June and July so I could get a headstart on the fall garden even with temperatures still much too hot. With mixed results, it’s something I’ll definitely do again next year with some new information and more experience under my belt.

One of the veggies I did this with was squash. Various varieties of mostly summer squash went into my seed trays, came up, and reached for the window. They even bloomed a bit before I had a chance to get them outside.

I put eight in the ground.

Two were gone the next day. Completely wilted into the surface of the soil.

Two were gone the second day. Completely demolished by some tiny hungry belly.

The other four went the way of the first four sometime that week.

Not wanting to turn the other seedlings out for such a certain fate, I kept them alive in their seed tray on the porch. A previously unsprouted seed burst forth. They didn’t mind the heat so long as they got their water each morning. I knew this wasn’t going to be a permanent solution, so I went in search of one. Books. Articles. Blogposts. More books. Finally I went back to the seed packets. Generic instructions on all the seed packets save for the ones from Baker Creek which read: “…start a couple of weeks earlier indoors, but never let squash transplants become rootbound, and do not distrub the roots in transplanting.”

Oops.

These transplants had definitely become rootbound, and as a results, their roots were definitely disturbed during transplanting. Lesson learned for next year.

In the meantime, I still needed an attempt at saving the transplants I still had. The very-rootbound transplants. So rootbound that the seed tray had become more of a 2″x9″x13″ soilmat held together by roots. (I already said, “oops” twice, but I’ll say it again – oops!) DH had the lightbulb moment I was looking for. Plant the mat!

So I carefully loosened the mat from the pan, laid it in a shallow hole, and let it soak in. Let the survival of the fittest begin!

Update: They’re all dead. All nine of them chomped to the ground in the night.