23,948 Garden Web Discussions | Vegetable Gardening
Thanks, Dave! I looked up the squash vine borer and performed surgery on three plants, removing a fat borer from each. I hope each plant has a one-borer limit, because I didn't want to try digging for more.
A fourth plant appears to be affected, but the stem at the base of the plant is so thick and short that I didn't want to cut further after the first cut, which yielded nothing. Instead, I cut off two badly affected leaf stems. Instead of white borers, I found several dark brown (or dark red) millipede-type critters inside the stems. I wonder if they're a side effect of the squash borer, or a separate problem. Any idea?
I covered all the slits with soil and am hoping for the best.
Chris - if you will check out the other 'help me ID..." posts further down the page here and over on page 2 - been a real run of the question lately - you'll find that volunteers and those grown from saved seed can seldom by identified. And even then they are just guesses.
Squash cross-pollinate far too readily (unless it is prevented) for them to breed true. So yours is a hodge-podge. :)
Growing out volunteers can be interesting but seldom worth the work or space.
Dave
Oh, thanks for the ammonia idea! I definitely have to go for deterrent since DH doesn't want to set a trap and attract more/other creatures, and capture the wrong one. How long does the ammonia last? Does it need to be refreshed every day? Bummer it's going to rain for the next 5 days so it might get diluted. I'll post back and let you know if the hoop worked.
Funny thing is it's just this 1 spot, and I haven't seen any worms at all, certainly if there were worms in the beds there would likely be more than 1 and I have 120ft of wooden-framed beds in the 65ft tunnel, plus another 60x4 ft mounded deep bed of the same compost in the middle. The compost is so old (finished) that I don't think there's anything for a worm to eat. No cutworms or grubs either (maybe next year), this manure had been covered with landscape fabric for a few years.
Because the plant is staying put and not running around, I don't think it's a decorative gourd. The texture of the rind and the leaves suggest yellow squash lineage. When the plant sets another fruit, harvest it as a summer squash and see how it tastes.
If I had your strange squash I'd let it mature taste it as a winter squash, but don't get your hopes up. In my experience, four out of five times they are dogs, but fun to grow.
When you dabble in open-pollinated cucurbits, some off types are part of the scene.
Agree with planatus. Since you planted volunteers you will likely never know its name as it probably doesn't have one. It is a result of previous cross-pollination of unknown plants. But the odds are it is edible, just not worth the space it is taking up in taste.
As all the previous "help me ID this squash" posts here show, saving squash seeds and growing volunteers very seldom turns out to be worthwhile. It cross-pollinates far too easily to faithfully reproduce from seed without active intervention early in the previous season.
Dave
I live in S.E. Ohio and we have had some 'different' weather from the usual. Lots of rain, but our rains have been interspersed with sun, and there have been a lot of just showers. My garden has been a thing of beauty this year and the biggest challenge is keeping the weeds under control, with the almost constant temperatures and high humidity. I have had issues with fulvia fulva on tomatoes and this is a first I have ever even seen it on outside plants. It's usually a greenhouse issue. They're still producing and are just starting to ripen with no damage to the fruit. Very bland taste this year, but I expected that because of the rains. So far the yields have been lower than last year's but still quite ample. Low insect pressure. The horrid winter had one good effect, I guess.
Mine do this every year when it starts to get too warm. I spray with water to wash all the aphids off, then spray with a mixture of neem/peppermint castille soap and water.
I do this every 5-7 days and if it needs a water spray in-between, go ahead.
Found a nice photo of a cuke and lady beetle side by side
Here is a link that might be useful: Cuke Beetle Lady Beetle side by side
My cucumbers always bite the dust about this time in the growing season from Downy Mildew (even when rotating and following other practices for preventing disease spreading). I have been searching the internet for downy mildew resistant cucumbers. What I found was that in 2004 the disease adapted/morphed and many of the cucumbers listed as downy mildew resistant (DMR) are no longer very resistant.
I did find a study by Twin Oaks done in 2013 that shows the following varieties were the top rated in their trials. I do not know how reliable this trial was though:
Green DMR (Cornell) NY12-264
Suyo Long (Twin Oaks)
Ivory Queen (Cornell)
Shantung Shuyo F1 (Fedco) 341
Has anyone grown any of the above varieties. Where do you buy the Cornell seeds. I went to the Cornell website but could not find these seeds for sale.
Here is a link that might be useful: Twin Oaks DMR trials
My red norlands did not flower at all.
People here say to wait until the plant fully dies back and leave them in the ground a couple more weeks for thicker skins that store well, I didn't have issues storing my potatoes dug up as the plant was dying, for a few weeks at least, but I think it depends on the variety. If you are harvesting a ton of potatoes you want to store a long time then you should wait.
Must be a matter of type, too. We've only hit 80 once or twice this July, with nights in the 40's and a couple days only in the upper 50's -- my sauce tomatoes are ripening v. slowly, and are nothing special taste-wise. However, my Sun Golds are stupendous, as always (also ripening v. slowly)
If the plants are growing well and there is no signs of any disease but no blooms then likely it is available nutrient related.
In the deep south high heat can delay blooming but in zone 5 temps I'd suspect there is excess nitrogen in the soil or insufficient phosphorous. Excess N leads to big bushy, plants with few to no blooms.
So what and how much have you fed them or what have you added to the soil in the way of nutrients? And I assume these are in ground? If they are in containers then that is a whole other set of issues.
Dave
I did feed them at about two weeks with miracle gro. Probably too early. After some reading, I probably wasn't supposed to do that until they had already bloomed.