Garden Experiment...FAIL

Lest anyone think I only note our successes…lest anyone think I only see the positive…lest anyone think EVERYTHING always works just right around here… read the following.


Last year we had a bumper crop of butternut squash. It was great!

We had them for sale (we sold them whole, as well as bags of peeled chunks)
and for all the recipes we could find. A customer-friend shared this grilling idea with us. YUM!

There were so many that some of them ended up moldering away in storage. (ugh)

This year, we decided that we should grow some other types of winter squash. Perhaps, we thought, if we had a number of different kinds, we wouldn’t have any left to molder away at the end of the season. Turns out we were right.

The seeds germinated well. The plants looked great when we planted them in the garden. We followed our usual method of irrigation, planting and mulching in a single day. We took some pride in our job well done.

Then we noticed something odd. A number of the plants died. No problem, I start extras for that situation.

The plants began to grow. Then more plants died. No extra plants now, so we would just have a smaller crop.

More plants died. We checked the irrigation.

More plants died. We checked for bugs and disease.

Long story short…here’s the crop for 2011.





What? Didn’t see a picture? That’s because there is NO crop for 2011. Nope, not a single squash.

Neither of us is quite sure what happened. We had a similar problem when we tried great variety in the past. I have no idea how variety could be the problem, but we will return to what gave us success in the past. Guess the future will see us planting butternut…just butternut…squash.

One constant in farming… “there’s always NEXT year!”