I’m afraid I stopped too often to smell the flowers.
I enjoyed a few too many dreamy strolls, imagining those huge squashes and other amazing vegetables that I’d be enjoying in just a few months. In an effort to balance the daily stresses of life with periods of intentional peace and quiet in the garden, I missed some important clues of trouble in the squash patch.
Then came the searing heat that New Hampshire has experienced during this last week. Though I worked diligently to keep my gardens watered and mulched, many plants wilted in the heat of the day anyway.
Herein lies the problem. I naively attributed the wilting blue hubbard and pink banana squash vines to the heat.
In fact, for a few days, they seemed to perk back up with a good evening soak. Then, most vines were unable to recover, remaining permanently wilted. I wondered about squash vine borer but, not until today did I take a minute to consult a reference to confirm the diagnosis.
I reexamined the vines and clearly saw the sawdust-like debris left by the squash vine borer’s caterpillars as they tunneled into the vines.
I carefully sliced open the vines, but did not find any caterpillars inside, leaving me to believe they’ve, perhaps, already exited and burrowed into the soil. My reference, Rodale’s Garden Problem Solver, suggested injecting the vines with BT (Bacillus thuringiensis), but that seemed likely to be effective only if caterpillars might still be at work in the vines (or not yet at work).
What I now know, is that two early actions on my part might have prevented this problem:
- One would have been to use row cover to prevent the squash vine borer moth from laying its eggs on the vines in the first place.
- The second would have been to watch for little reddish-brown eggs on the main stem of the plant, near the base.
Just a little less dreaming, and a little more attention to the business of gardening.
I sometimes wonder about the danger of boasting and whether it can lead to failure. Is there such a thing as karma, or some sort of in-this-lifetime version of it? It’s true, I boasted that I might need a larger oven to accommodate my stuffed squashes. Maybe even a small pickup truck to deliver them to friends, who would surely be clamoring for a pink banana squash of their own. One little moth has taught me—once again—the importance of remaining humble.
Learning is a process. Hard things happen along the way.
There may be hope. I buried each of the remaining, healthy vines in soil and watered them in well, in hopes that the vines will set new roots and live on.
The good news is that other squash varieties in my garden are, I’m pretty sure, unaffected.
Balance is everything, in gardening as in other aspects of life. An evening routine of watering and dreaming to unwind from the workday is a fine idea. A morning inspection, plant by plant, might be an equally good idea.
Winter squashes are new to my garden and I realize now that it would have behooved me to do a little research in advance. I had enough general knowledge to see the recurring wilting as a warning sign; had I known to be on the alert in late June for flying moth activity and eggs on the vines, I could have averted disaster.
Or, near disaster. Time will tell.
