Have a bit of success!

Howdy!

Okay, so admittedly, I've lost more fruit to pests than I've been able to harvest, but look what I harvested last night:

One 5-pound buttercup squash
One small-to-medium onion
Two LARGE cucumbers (as big, if not bigger, than the grocery store cukes.
Three large radishes
about a cup of green beens
about a cup of beet greens
several stalks of mint (not shown)

Now all I have to do is find a really good recipe for the squash, and something else to put cukes in besides salad, and I'm GOLDEN! LOL!

GREAT HARVEST!

"Give us this day, our daily bread!"

Godspeed and Good Harvest!

Linda

Looking good! Nice harvest.

I can't seem to grow a radish bigger than a large marble. How long were those in the ground?

Mark

SoFlaCommercial - congratulations on your harvest. I know from personaly experience how difficult it is to raise vegetables in South Florida without the use of pesticides. It's all that warm weather - bugs don't die of the cold like they do elsewhere!

oh! I had SUCH disappointment this morning after I put this post up.

we had (daughter and I) placed three 7-foot tall trellises of wood and clothes wire for each of the b-squash plants. they're growing, and also pretty much (sp?) espaliered them down the anchor wire which was attached to the fence. There were six squash just hanging there, growing, all beautiful.... I didn't want to lose them, so I sprayed the critter-n-bug-b-gone spray that I found elsewhere on this site, and go out this morning, I had to throw out FOUR of the six that were hanging like apples off this vine..... bleeping worms/caterpillars got into them. A perfectly round hole, less than a millimeter.

I was SO TICKED!

so, guess it's back to the organocide or sevin dust.

BTW - anyone have a recipe for buttercup squash? I'm looking on food tv, too - just thought I'd ask.

I feel your pain, the same problem here with all those bugs in the FL heat. I had 3 large calabaza this year. Then the mole crickets came and attacked everything, tomatos, okra, mango, papaya. All I planted, they ate, they even eat cayenne pepper and garlic!
Anyway, if you have fresh sage, you can bake the squash in the oven and that works so well together. Cut pieces and salt and olive oil them, then put the whole fresh sage leaves on the squash which will be on the sheet. Bake around 350 until soft. Easy but very delish!

omg! I harvested this GORGEOUS yellow, crook-neck squash (summer squash). I saw two small holes near the top of the neck, so I cut that off. I didn't see any holes going down into the squash, so I figured I'd use it.

the next day, I start to slice it up so I could put it on the grill, and noticed some bad parts in the middle. I continued cutting, figuring I could use just wasn't bad.

Once I started getting actual holes in the middle of the squash, I looked into the squash and to my behold was this BIG UGLY dark green worm/caterpillar..? I thought caterpillars ate, then formed crystalises and then became butterflies....

what the heck was this thing? ICK!

Those darn ******!!

VitaVeggieMan:

I have no clue how long radishes were in - I had planted them as a trap crop for my squash....but the trap crop didn't work. :(

I planted the radishes for trap and deterrent as well. But the mole crickets loved them. 6 months before I had radishes the twice the size of baseballs. They looked like giant beet roots. If your soil is too compact, they might have a hard time growing. Since my soil is so sandy, they were able to grow into giant mutant radishes...

SoFlaCommercial - some caterpillars become moths, others become butterflies.

No caterpillar is welcome in my garden - they are voracious eaters!

Wasps eat caterpillars :)

yea, had to break down and buy some Sevin dust over the weekend....just waiting til dusk to apply it.

my experience with vines: cukes, mellons, squash, etc is they grow good, bloom and set small fruit, and then all of a sudden one day, ker-ploop, the whole thing dies back, probably due to vine-borers.
http://www.ca.uky.edu/entomology/entfacts/ef314.asp

I think there are some native squash varieties that I need to try, that may be naturally resistant. Something called Seminole Pumpkin would be interisting.

Cucurbita moschata 'Seminole Pumpkin'

Soflacommercial,
What do you use mint for?. I have tons of mint and i use them for tabouli occasionally. What other dishes can I use them? thanks,

Belle

Fresh mint leaves in your iced tea! So Refreshing!

Mint jelly

Rubs on different meats

Mint is a pretty common player in Mediterranean and Indian food. It is perfect for lamb. It also plays nice with lots of fruit (peaches, mango and citrus come to mind), so it works well in chutneys, as well as other fruit sauces/salsas/glazes. Throw a few leaves in a glass of lemonade for a refreshing twist.

My favorites, though, are mint juleps and mojitos :)

man, oh, man!

I'm having to pull up almost everything!

I have watermelon in a small raised bed. it's growth is icky - not big lush leaves like in the other bed. it grows long, but very little fruit, and what does fruit rots on the vine once it gets to be about two inches. the base of the plant where it comes out of the ground looks all dead (leaves are dying), but the ends of the vine look fine and are flowering.

I found some sort of dead beetle in one stalk of corn, and the other stalk looked like it had been chewed clear off. Don't know if it's a worm, or a raccoon, but with all the rain we've had recently, the stalk where it was chewed is actually rotten. there was also some brown gunk on the leaves. it looked like the same brown gunk that was at the tip of the chewed up stalk.

My pepper plants are growing, but some of the leaves look like they have brown patches on them. Wonder if they're getting scalded, or if it's blight. I have to look up blight later.

oh, and I have ANTS OF EVERY TYPE INVADING MY RAISED BEDS!!! WTH?

can't use ant killer in the beds. ugh!

hint: the more nitrogen fertilizer you use, the more "softer growth" is food for the pests.
Most the the old timer Florida gardeners I know plant in February,
but come summer, they say to heck with it...

Congrads on the harvest and nice looking veggies.

We use a variation of the roasted butternut squash with sage. It's very very good. You mmight check the squash and watermelon for cucumber beetles.

Uses for the mint - Fresh Mint Tea, fresh fruit with chopped mint, Use as a green in your salads, and dry it for use for seasoning or tea this winter,

This message was edited Jul 16, 2011 7:15 AM

Thank you to all for the tea uses. Bellie