Hi Rita,

I have the exact same experience. My beans, hot peppers, snow peas, greens, broccoli, lettuce, sweet potatoes, flowers are do well for me.

Squash, Cukes and Tomatoes never thrive. I wonder if it is different nutrients or something?

I have to imagine it's more about variety than anything else. I had a volunteer winter squash for a number of years that grew & thrived & seemed impervious to the usual diseases & pests. Fruits were good, not great, but nice & sweet & the green immature 1s made a wonderful sub for summer squash - blossoms were huge & awesome & I made tons of fritters w/ them. Last couple of years haven't been so good & I don't think the seed I saved is any good any more.

I've had uneven results w/ cukes - they are so fussy! 1 year I grew Burpless & had 12 inch+ fruits, after that, meh - other varieties have been similar.

I always look for multiple disease/pest resistance when purchasing seed.

The squash vine borer is horrible in Fla. The moth lays the eggs at the base of the vines and the cucumbers, squash, pumpkins, etc. go into decline as the vine borers hatch and eat the insides of the vine thereby cutting off the food source of the plant. Often times there is little indication the borer is present, but sometimes they will leave an indication of a sawdust at the entry hole where they chewed into the vine. Once they get inside the vine the plant is toast and declines very rapidly. Only remedy is using poisons (which I abhor) or growing the vine type plants inside a screened enclosure to keep the moth out.

Lou

Yep, I couldn't believe it. I just started some zephyr squash and the very day the seedlings came up there was an SVB moth fluttering around looking interested. Before they even had any real leaves. Not sure what she thought of the rockwool, though.

Never see any around my seminole pumpkin, at least not so far, and it's a couple of weeks ahead of the zephyr and planted in the ground, to boot.

I grew Cushaw squash and a winter squash that looks kinda like a pumpkin. I have only harvested one winter squash. They flower like crazy, set fruit and then the fruit rots. Too much rain maybe? Hot and sweet peppers grew like crazy and so did Sungold tomatoes. I used organic fertilizers most of the time.

Hi Rita, before you give up on squash and cucs, try the parthenocarpic varieties. They do well for me, better in spring than fall, give them a good, rich soil and a big space, summer squash will not do well in containers but cucumbers will do fine.

Elizabeth, I try to give the tomatoes the best care as seedlings, after they get planted in the garden, I keep a daily inspection no matter how busy I am, this way I can check for any possible problem like bugs or disease.

Hi Carol

Hi Lou, it is always good to know about your experiences in our Florida soil...

Hi Writersblock, my experience planting the zephir squash one time was not good either, never planted them again even that they look kind of cute.

Zackey, the big size squash sometimes will only give one fruit or two, the smaller varieties are more prolific, the fruit drop might be lack of pollination.

With the torrential rains and wind that we had, I lost some plants that were huge and they were broken, I had to take them out anyway even that they had a lot of fruit.

Silvia

Try oriental long squash, I have grown for 3 years, no problem.
I gave seeds to my neighbors to grow too, He grew long squash pretty well too, He could not eat them all and gave them away to friends. I gave long squash to the KB home landscaper too, He liked it with stew. The landscaper gave me unused sod sometimes, I dug the dirt out, the rest buried under the top layer of dirt for compost.

This post was edited by JCTsai on Fri, Oct 17, 14 at 22:29

Hi Rita,
My spring cucumber harvest was incredible. We planted Marketmore cukes. This fall has been very tough on the cukes. I have had a Seminole pumpkin growing since last spring, one vine is 72 ft and growing. The SVB were the hardest to over come.
Try spraying with BT once every 7 - 10 days for the caterpillars. There is also some good info on the web on how to cut the SVB out of the vine without killing the vine.
I also used Neem oil, this was only as needed for disease and if the powdery mildew gets bad spray with a copper like Kocide. BT & Neem are organic and I think the Kocide is also. I found a book at the library, Rodale's "Find it fast answers for vegetable gardens" Lots of good info on how to grow & defeat the pests.
I have some pickling cukes on the trellis but its been a fight with all the pests. I still hope to can some up...
Good luck and don't give up.

Here is a link that might be useful: Rodale Find it fast answers to Vegetable Gardening

JCTsai, maybe I could trade some seeds for some of your oriental squash seeds?
Ritaweeda, we found that growing on a hugel was the best thing we ever did. We've used the same one for two years now. Rotating crops each year. Some of our other gardens did well with a few plants, but everything did great on the hugel with the exception of the squashes.

What's a hugel???
In the Spring I planted the squash in the ground and they got pickle worms. This time I planted them in big buckets and it looks like that borer got into them. I pulled one out today that was almost completely dead and the stem looked like something had been in there and eaten everything inside. I used Sevin on them but of course when it rains it washes off.

JCTsai, can you provide more specific info about 'oriental long squash'? What other name/names might we find it listed under? Have you the name of a supplier?

Inquiring minds want to know - TIAâ¦

P.S. Is this it?

Here is a link that might be useful: Long squash

This post was edited by carolb_w_fl on Fri, Oct 17, 14 at 10:45

Ritaweeda, a hugel is part of permaculture gardening. It is best if you google it. I will try to explain it briefly. You dig a 3 foot long hole, deep enough to bury branches and even logs from your property. Don't use any pine trees. They will gradually break down and hold moisture in the hugel. Cover the wood with soil. Add leaves, dried grass, mixing with soil, compost and manure as you go. You mound it up to about 3 feet high. It will decompose as time goes by. I try to use only organic fertilizers. I do use Black Cow because I am not comfortable with animal manure. It takes less watering than a conventional garden. I gave up on squashes. Not worth the aggravation. I don't spray anything. Even organic sprays can kill beneficial insects. I had tons of stink bugs and leaffooted bugs, but they really didn't do enough damage to bother me.

OK, Zackey, this hugel stuff is very intriguing. We have lots of acreage that we have VERY SLOWLY been cutting down trees, stacking up logs, and chipping the branches every couple of years when the pile is so big we can't stand it anymore. And we have to rent the chipper which is expensive and it's bust-@#% work for an entire weekend. We have only cleared a very small garden plot out of it and it really isn't big enough and we keep saying we need to expand but then there are all these trees and brush-clearing that needs to be done. So this is looking like an option except the digging of the trenches is labor-intensive without a tractor. But I have a couple of questions. One, would this work with very clay soil that stays pretty wet all the time anyways? Two, isn't it kind of dicey working and walking on top of these mounds, don't your feet sink down into the logs and cause a lot of problems?

Zackey:

If you like long squash seeds, send me an email, I will give you my address, so you can mail me the self-addressed stamped envelope, then I can mail long squash seeds to you. No pickle worms, no insects control, no chemical fertilizer, I always used urine 10 to 1 diluted with water for fertilizer, the seed is pretty big.

carolb_w_fl :

The link is right , Filipino called OPO, it has different varieties.

http://www.evergreenseeds.com/calgouropo.html

https://www.google.com/search?q=oriental+vegetable+seed&rlz=1C1KMZB_enUS528US529&oq=oriental+vegetable+seed&aqs=chrome..69i57j0l5.15512j0j8&sourceid=chrome&es_sm=93&ie=UTF-8#q=long+squash+

OPO ��" Long Squash

http://www.tastinghawaii.com/2013/05/opo-chinese-long-squash.html

This post was edited by JCTsai on Sat, Oct 18, 14 at 17:17

This year I planted yellow squash in my straw bale garden with the tomatoes and they did the best ever, there were so many I was giving them away.It was too crowded so I plan to plant them in their own bales next year.

Thanks! I didn't realize it was you, Carol. I think we traded before.

Currently growing baby persian cukes, romanesco zukes and broccoli. It's doing amazingly well, but I am having to stay on top of it for pets. Every day, lol.