Surefire Summer Squash

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Happy Endings

When you start seeing female flowers, it’s time to remove your bug cover so bees and other little pollinators can carry pollen between the boy and girl flowers, which should be plentiful thanks to your compost. Male flowers are attached to straight green stems, while female flowers sit atop the tiny little squash. One of the things we know about the myco-magic of squash is that plants use the nutritional goodies picked up in a biologically active rhizosphere (the soil right around the roots) to produce lots of big, viable pollen grains. And lots of big pollen grains mean loads of fat squash to harvest. Your uncovered plants eventually will be found by borers, beetles and squash bugs, but plants that were protected until they reached bearing size are strong enough to produce heavily, despite insect aggravation.

When my plants are showing signs of decline (usually from squash vine borer damage) and I’ve harvested all the summer squash I want, it’s time to stage a crackdown cleanup by spreading a large piece of clear plastic on the ground, piling on the pest-ridden plants, and quickly gathering it into a bundle. A few days in the hot summer sun kills anything living in there, leaving me with shrunken squash skeletons for my compost heap — an appropriate ending for my garden’s most prolific producer. 

Control Cucumber Beetles with Trap Cropping

Trap cropping, in which pests are lured to plants they like in hopes they will leave others alone, is a tricky business. If the technique fails, you can end up with extremely high pest populations. But in Massachusetts and Connecticut, vegetable growers are finding that perimeter plantings of ‘Blue Hubbard’ squash are so attractive to cucumber beetles that more valuable squash and pumpkins grown nearby have up to 90 percent fewer beetles. Trap cropping can reduce squash vine borer damage as well. An excellent review of this technique can be found at www.uvm.edu/vtvegandberry/factsheets/PerimeterTC.html.

Summer Squash Recipe Roundup

The summer squash season begins with newly opened yellow-orange squash blossoms, which taste like mild spinach, and contain beta carotene and several other vitamins. Use small scissors to nip out the stamens before rinsing the blossoms and patting them dry. Then add the squash blossoms to soups, salads or omelets; stuff them with soft cheese; sauté them in oil; or slip them into the prettiest (and tastiest) cheese quesadillas you’ve ever made. You won’t hurt your squash harvest one bit by lifting the bug cover long enough to pick all the early blossoms, which are mostly males.

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