re: 2025 Spring Garden Thread

I planted more zucchini after my first run in with the SVB as a challenge. I check the bases every day and sometimes twice. Have never seen an egg or moth. The new plants all already have grubs. I much live in the richest environment for those things ever.

3rd wave just sprouting now. This is war!

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I planted more zucchini after my first run in with the SVB as a challenge.

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I frustrate myself each year with zucchini and yellow crookneck squash that get destroyed by SVB's shortly after I get the first harvest of squash. One year I went as far as to put a fine mesh cover over the entire area where the squash were planted, but that required me to personally pollinate the plants with Q-Tips so they could produce fruit since the bees couldn't do their job.

That got pretty old, pretty fast.

Once again I'm having a bumper crop of okra. My 50+ plants are producing about 65-75 pods a day with my highest single day pick being 105 pods. I've got all I can use put up in the freezer and have given away more than 1200 pods by my estimate, pickled a dozen or more quarts and grilled enough for feed a small army.

Now I'm giving it away to neighbors, friends, family and casual acquaintances. I usually don't pull the plants until mid September but may make an exception and do that in a couple more weeks.

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Guess we'll have some 4 footers to pick.

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It is incredible how fast they can gain length if not picked daily. I will pick pods 4 or more inches long when I pick daily and will have just as many pods smaller that I leave to get larger and in 24 hours I swear they grow 1 1/2 inches or more.

Have a few get lost in the foliage and they can get to 7+ inches in a couple days and too woody to use. Those are the ones I pick to let dry out for seeds for the next seasons planting and I usually only save 2 pods to save the seeds since there are at least 100 or more in each pod.