Z is for Zucchini

All of the vegetables in bed A are prolific; just this one bed can produce lots of food for a family. Zucchini are notorious for their abundance so only two plants are necessary. Grated zucchini freezes well and so we use it year round for zucchini bread. Fresh picked it can make zucchini boats (think Stromboli), French fried wedges and numerous other ways.

I plant seeds or transplants about the beginning of May and give them some protection with a plastic milk jug without a cap. I plant over a “honey hole” filled with fertilizer amended compost at natural ground level. The main negative against zucchini is that they are very subject to insects and disease and normally do not make it through July. Mexican bean beetle (looks like a copper colored lady bug with 16 spots), squash bug and squash borer are the main villains. Some sort of row cover protection is needed until the first female flowers appear and even then cover the plants at night. One method is to make four-sided,
 topless, bottomless wooden boxes and staple cheese cloth or row cover cloth on top; another method is to make row cover cloches over wire or sapling arches and held down with boards and rocks. Two scrap boards with aluminum foil stapled to one side placed beside a plant may confuse the squash borer and allow squash bugs a board to hide under until you flip the board and stomp them in the morning. Another solution might be to plant a circle of onion sets in early March around the hill where you want to plant your zucchini in the beginning of May. These scallions could not only repel the bugs and borers but also serve as a support for row cover cloth anchored with stones. All the garden literature says that once a borer is in the vine, it should be slit out and killed and then the zucchini stem and some of the vine should be covered so that the plant may reroot. My feeling is that this advise is a case of too little too late; I prefer to rap a scrap rag or some aluminum foil around the stem and hill up the stem and a little of the foliage with soil as soon as possible to prevent the borer moth from ever laying its eggs. Always destroy any red BB shaped eggs of the squash bugs on the leaves. Neem oil is probably one the oldest and safest insecticides and I might spray this on the stem but not on the flowers as that could kill the bee pollinators.

I have driven my point into the ground about controlling insect pests and disease on squash plants because in my opinion if you can control them you will have a very bountiful harvest. I have seen Mexican bean beetles totally ignore a bush bean patch to eat and kill every zucchini plant that I grew.