Greenhouse #1 Update

The cucumber/zucchini greenhouse is spent. This one is Greenhouse #1. Time to tear out the old plants, rejuvenate the soil, and plant again. I sowed the seeds for those plants on June 6th in the mini-greenhouses. They grew there as seedlings until they were transplanted to the large greenhouse on July 1st. On July 16th I harvested my first baby zucchini. The first cucumber was picked on July 29th. By August 25th the plants were starting to fail, so I removed the poor looking ones, keeping the healthiest of the group. Last week I finally called it quits. The plants looked terrible. They were over mature, brittle, had lost most of their leaves, and were no longer flowering. I kept them in the greenhouse just long enough to harvest the last of their fruits. 

Tired old plants ready to be pulled out. 

There were a total of 9 cucumber plants and 7 zucchini. From these I harvested 102 cucumbers and 41 zucchini. I find this to totally amazing because prior to this experiment I had produced only a few cucumbers and zero zucchini. All previous attempts had succumbed to pests and disease. 

Cleaning up the greenhouse, I pulled the plants, pulled or cut off all weeds, and found two humongous overly mature cucumbers hiding down along the bottom of the greenhouse covering. So they brought the cuke total to 104, although these two giants went to feed the chickens instead of us.

12" slicer cuke, and 6" pickler. 

I'm right now in the process of adding soil amendments, which I will lightly till in before replanting. A five gallon bucket of fresh sheep manure per garden bed (each bed is 50 square feet). A 3 inch deep layer of homemade compost. A good sprinkling of dolomite lime, because my soil is deficient in available calcium. 

Cleaned up and ready for soil amendments. Crusty, the black farm dog, is helping. 

The soil in this greenhouse is in the process of being improved and built up. The cukes and squash were the first crops from this soil. So I was impressed with the yield. Of the cukes, the Saber variety was by far the most productive. The other varieties suffered from the soil not being up to par. Of the zucchini, Desert far out did Golden Glory and Black Beauty. Again, I suspect the soil fertility is to blame.  I plan to retry all the various cucumber varieties again, and I'll grow Desert and Golden Glory again. But in place of Black Beauty, I plan to try Partenon zucchini instead. 

Zucchini Successful So Far

This is my first time at growing zucchini squash in a greenhouse. So far, so good. The plants are growing robustly. They are flowering. And best yet, I'm getting baby squashes. 

The plants seem to love the greenhouse environment. 

The varieties I'm growing are not listed as being parthenocarpic. But they are ones that tend to have a strong tendency to set fruits without pollination. I don't know if the little squashes would continue to grow into large fruits, but as long as I'm getting baby gourmet squash I'm very happy. 

This is the size I harvest for baby zucchini...4" to 5". 

So far it looks like I'm getting around 80% of the female blossoms successfully producing fruits. Yes, I'm seeing some aborts. I'm not attempting to pollinate the flowers myself. If I even just get two thirds of the flowers producing squash, I'll be very satisfied....especially if that means no additional work for me. If the percentage falls below 50%, then I'll make the effort to hand pollinate. 

Golden Hubbard Squash

Looks like I have a winner. Finding a squash that can survive the bugs here is difficult. At first I wasn't too sure about this one, but after a shaky start, the golden Hubbard is producing. 

Just because it's producing doesn't mean that it's a no-work veggie. At least on my farm, squash, pumpkins, and gourds need almost daily attention. The stems need to get buried or covered in mulch when squash borers make their appearance. This also helps save parts of a plant should powdery mildew start up, because the plants will root at each leaf node if given a chance. And spraying the flowers and young fruits with dipel after every rain helps control caterpillars, thus reducing fruiting failure.  

I've been awfully lax with the golden Hubbards. Because of the frequent rain, I haven't been successful keeping dipel on them. It's on and off again. But I have managed to keep the squash borers under control. And powdery mildew has only managed to kill parts of plants, while sparing other vine runners enough so that they are producing.

To date I've harvested over two dozen Hubbards. They go to feed the livestock. But then, that's the reason I'm growing them. I have yet to try eating one myself. Not that I'm not interested, but I have quite a bit of food available right now. 

Will I grow more hubbards? You betcha! I plan to try the other varieties of hubbard squashes to see if they tolerate my conditions. And who knows, perhaps this was just a good year for hubbards. Maybe next year they will fail. We shall see what's comes. 

Golden Hubbard Squash

For several years I've been hoping to find squash or pumpkin that can stand up to the pickleworm moth. My best hope so far has been my own landrace crosses, but I'm still hardheaded enough to keep ordering seeds of different varieties hoping, just hoping that some will show some natural resistance. This years best candidate so far at thwarting the pickleworm has been the golden hubbard squash. 

Above, the flower is just closing after have been open all morning. I made sure it was pollinated by doing it myself, since there are not enough bees around nowadays. 

By the next morning the little immature fruit will already be starting to swell, a sign that it's been pollinated successfully. 

Just a week later the squash has ballooned up. I'm astounded to see how quickly this squash swells in size. 

And two more weeks the squash is still getting bigger. 

This is my first attempt at growing golden hubbard. So far, so good. I'm not losing them to the moth. So far they haven't come down with powdery mildew, though I fully expect it will happen eventually. And several fruits are setting on each vine, a plus.

While golden hubbard is doing good so far, my other squashes aren't faring as well. The white patty pan succumbed to powdery mildew even before it set its first fruit. The zucchini lost all fruits to the moth, then died due to the mildew. A pumpkin that I tried, I can't recall the name offhand, also died away with powdery mildew.