Zukes vs cukes—same family, different natures. On the left, zucchini are big, bold, and prolific with fruit that blow up to dirigible class if you take your eye off of them and stop harvesting more or less daily. On the right, cucumber, more modest in appearance, preferring to vine out than shoot up, unless trellised. Cukes are about equally prolific in the quantity of fruit as the zukes, but not so prone to expanding when left unharvested. Here, barely two weeks from being seeds in a package, with very similar seed leaves (the first two leaves to come out), the difference in their true leaf size already displays their separate ways. Today, they’re out in the sun.
zucchini
Zucchini…
Always reliable, and still a pleasure, with a sense of wonder and a little relief, to see the first zucchini of the year appear. Weird? Maybe. You’d think after growing veggies season after season, at some point, one would get used to it all. For me, at least, that hasn’t been the case! For whatever reason: cool!
Wheel hoe vs weeds
A tool in its element! Wheel hoes are great, and this particular one* is fantastic. Unchecked, you can see what weeds get up to given a week or two. This stretch of dirt was protected under the edge of the row cover that’s been protecting the zucchini to the right from cucumber beetles. Now there’s a dense mat of dandelion (weed or excellent salad green?: right now, weed), thistle, mallow, and lambs quarter. And there’s the steel blade that will run through them, gliding just under the soil, slicing them down. Brutal sounding, and all part of the garden balance. (The zucchini have powdery mildew, those white splotches on the leaves, which usually happens when there’s not that much sun. It can get really bad and ruin things, but usually, zucchini will outgrow it. It’s about sunny days…the weather. Another “we shall see…”)
*I got this wheel hoe well over a decade ago from Valley Oak Tool Company, one of the few companies that are a pleasure to recommend, purely out of appreciation for quality product that does its job!
Zukes in the field
Zucchini, transplanted into the field a couple of weeks ago, don’t seem to be doing much so far. Don’t be fooled! Once they get settled—I imagine a lot of root action, spreading wide and down—they will explode. Pop! They’ve been under row cover to protect them from the cucumber beetles that attack all the cucurbits. I’m giving them some air on yet another mainly cloudy day. It’s generally not a good idea on the leaf disease front to keep our local garden veggies in warm damp conditions that can happen under row cover when there’s not a lot of sun. Looking at the photo, I can’t help but notice all the other garden would-be inhabitants, what we call weeds. I see some thistle, mallow, dandelion and of course, pigweed (aka amaranth). Like the zukes, they only seem like they’re not doing much…because I recently wheel hoed!
Scratching the zuke
Groundhogs are back again, and they seem to be more active than last year. I’m checking everything out every day to see how far they might go. It comes down to what they turn their beady little eyes and big sharp teeth to next. My garden ravager experience has been for the most part with deer. When a veg garden is new to them, they tend to explore crop by crop. A night or two of nibbling on a new one, then, full-on devouring, and off to the next. So far, the over-sized rodents have focused on lettuce and brassicas. Today, I noticed what look like scratch marks on a single zucchini. I’m no wildlife biologist trained in animal feeding behavior. Still, I suspect some fair-sized beast, like a groundhog, tried to scratch their way into the zuke. And failed. That’s kinda weird, doesn’t look like an A-game effort. Have they given up for good? Or was it a much smaller veg-eating creature? Or something else entirely? The big question is, will the zukes be next?
October harvest
Great weather into the first week of October, with no hard frost so far. The veggie harvest list: beets, carrots, peppers, garlic, onion, green onion, zucchini, spinach, kale, lettuce, cabbage, butternut squash, radicchio, broccoli, eggplant. Nice!
Early share
This week’s harvest basket, still greens, mainly: young curly and flat leaf kale, baby bok choi (autographed by a few flea beetles that made it under the cover), our Zippy Mix (today’s version, mustards as always, with mizuna and some baby Chinese cabbage), 4-lettuce mix (out of sight), plus garlic scapes and baby zucchini. Pretty simple. Not bad… We’re not doing CSA this year, but we do have a handful of share commitments!