November 21, 2016

Avalanche column

November 3, 2016

This past gardening season I planted two different yellow summer squash varieties. My normal tried and true and a new one from High Mowing seeds (Organic Success PM Straight neck).

There was one really big reason why. In the name of the squash there is a PM. This abbreviation stands for Powdery Mildew (PM) resistant.

I planted this variety because around the end of July and towards the middle of August this mold becomes prevalent on most of the cucurbit family (cucumber, melon, squash...).

This is a slow death to the plant. It starts as little whitish spots and then soon completely engulfs the plant. It shuts the plant down from being able to photosynthesize, the plant dies because it cannot produce its own food.

PM starts to raise its head when we have high humidity with warm days and cool nights (lower 60's). There are a number of treatments that one can do but these treatments only slow the demise of the plant.

I was very curious as to how resistant this variety was. It gob smacked me in a couple ways. Not only was it EXTREMELY resistant it is a very heavy producer.

I could very easily plant half the plants I normally grow and this variety would still surpass my other varieties production.

Other than spraying for cucumber beetles a couple of times (they were nasty garden wide this year), there was very little pest control that I did for this squash.

When the zucchini I planted near this squash was destroyed by PM, the worst this squash got was a few sporadic infections on a few plants. They soon grew past these infections.

This is not a bush variety, it is a vine, which took me some getting used to but it had a trait (I really like) that is only briefly exhibited with my other summer squash varieties.

When my other varieties start to bloom they put on a huge flush of male flowers and only a few female flowers. This assures that the females get pollinated.

This new variety continues this big flush of male flowers along side a huge flush of females.

I have noticed with my other varieties that individual plants would rotate between producing male and female flowers. This caused the various plants that were in the male bloom cycle to be “out of production” until it started to produce females once again. This NEVER happened with this variety.

Another interesting thing when this squash was slowing down surprised me. I thought the harvest was finished until we got a warming trend,was I ever surprised to see this squash flush back into production.

This is an amazing squash, I plan this to be my only yellow squash variety.

Oh and one last trait, it's OP and the seeds can be saved. More on saving squash seeds at a latter date.