In summer, there’s squash
I grew up among peers who called them “squushes” and aunts who called them “squarshes,” and it seems the only summer squash variety any of us knew were Yellow Crooknecks. The aunts often found new squarsh recipes because, left to their own devices, summer squash plants can be capital P prolific. There are only so many you can feed to the livestock, so the aunts cooked up some and froze the rest.
Squashes and their kin are native to the Western Hemisphere. Seeds found in an Ecuadorian cave were supposedly 12,000 years old. Edible squashes derived from wild varieties that were so bitter, the only animals who could stomach them were mastodons. After the last Ice Age, there were no more mastodons, and nice folks just like you and me figured out ways to domesticate the bitterness away from the wild ones, and now we have butternuts and acorns.
Squashes might be the oldest cultivated food plant in North America. It was gardeners in the central part of our hemisphere who patiently charmed the wild Curcurbita pepo into edible squashes, and as squash knowledge spread throughout the hemisphere, new varieties were born because squashes easily cross-pollinate.
As a food source, squashes were invaluable. They were baked whole in a bed of coals, or squash strips were dried like jerky to be stored for later. Seeds were dried and roasted and eaten with fruit. Squash blossoms were popular in recipes of the Zuni Nation. The Wampanoags of Massachusetts had squash varieties growing before Miles Standish and the hungry pilgrims arrived.
European explorers and missionaries took seeds back to Europe where gardeners and college students cross-bred different squashes to create even more varieties, and so it went as they spread around the world. A variety from Germany is yellow and shaped like tulip. One from New Zealand resembles a golf ball painted with alternating dark and light green stripes. Both Guatemala and France have tennis ball-sized varieties with green-striped patterns, and somebody somewhere made a zucchini.
Gardeners in our area who planted summer squashes at the earliest possible time this year might already be leaving bags of zucchini on doorsteps and then running away. Gardeners know better but plant too many squash plants anyway.
As a nascent gardener, I noticed seed catalogs promoting zucchini varieties that were even “more productive.” I envisioned plant breeders in white coats and fancy garden gloves scheming for plants that popped out a zucchini once an hour. A gardener with several plants would need a traffic cop to keep order.
A market gardener might need plants like that, but a typical family garden might have limited space and zucchini tolerance, so only a handful of plants would suffice. Typical summer squash varieties spread out a bit, so plan for expansion. One plant of some zucchini varieties might take up a four ft.-by-four ft. area.
One strategy would be to gather soil into an elevated mound big enough to handle three or four squash plants. In the middle of the hill, insert a container of some kind with small holes in the bottom. Fill the container with water which seeps out slowly nourishing the roots from below.
The good news is squash plants respond favorably to well-prepared soil and adequate watering. Sorry to report, however, that those plants are tasty to aphids, beetles, leafhoppers, squash bugs, vine borers, thrips and white flies. Squash bugs will lay eggs on the undersides of big squash leaves, and soon nymphs and adults will be crawling like a plague all over the vines while dining on plant juices. The leaves wilt and eventually die.
One organic deterrent is a regimen of insecticidal soap sprayed three or four times a week for at least a couple weeks. There are varieties supposedly more resistant, or a gardener can try to outsmart squash bugs by waiting until later in the season to plant squash, but it’s hard to be smarter than a squash bug. I’ve tried.