On the non-Squash side of the garden.
The Radish are doing great and are making fat pods. They have all laid down with the high winds and storms we have had blowing through.
And the Kang Kong Water Spinach is starting to take off and put on some good growth.
and another over here with the carrots in the background
With the insect explosion on the squash bug side I am currently germinating the following seed which I have planned out for the Summer planting for the Fall garden:
Let’s see if those Squash bugs want to suck the juices from any of those.
From the Moschata squash patches.
1 patch decimated by squash bugs and completely dead.
2nd patch is just about completely dead.
Patches 3 and 4 had running on the vines, their centers are decimated and dead and only the runners are alive, however they are full of squash bugs so I don’t have high hopes for them.
From the Cushaw squash plantings.
144 seeds planted, all plants gone, squash bugs got them all. One tiny cushaw squash formed but did not grow after the vine started being attacked by squash bugs.
From the Melon mixes planted.
First melon harvested for the year. Tuscan style ribbed melon with netting and cantaloupe style interior. Seeds saved. The other melons are just not growing or growing slowly, some may choose to finally run and grow, I don’t hold out hope but I am open to any happy surprises for the melon patches.
Watermelons. I have about 1/4 of the planted seeds up and running and bushing out and flowering.
For the Fall Planting Experiments so far on the germination station:
Jar is the melon seeds from above. Going to let the ferment a bit before washing them and drying them down for storage.
Bitter melon is the winner in the unofficial germination race. All three are now germinated.
So far we have:
Trombetta di Albenga - Curcurbit Moschata [3 planted, 2 germinated]
Armenian Cucumber - Cucumis melo var. flexuosus [3 planted, 1 germinated]
Violetta Lunga - Solanum melongena [3 planted, 0 germinated]
Bitter Gourd - Momordica charantia [3 planted, 3 germinated]
Luffa Angled Ridge Gourd - Luffa acutangula [3 planted, 2 germinated]
Snake Gourd - Lagenaria siceraria [3 planted, 1 germinated]
All squash plants are now officially dead. The half dead carcasses are teaming with squash bugs, like a veritable highway of sucking insects.
Not only that the entire garden is teaming with them, crawling across the ground and over every other plant in quiet desperation as they have now completely destroyed their original food source.
On a brighter note, I found three tenacious cucumber plants hiding under the fruit trees, small and stunted but one had the start of three fruits so there is hope yet for seed to continue the adaptation experiment with them next year–provided the squash bugs don’t find them.
The watermelon are expanding and watermelon fruits are forming, but they are now swarmed with desperate squash bugs already sucking on the baby watermelon fruits as it forms.
The Kale+ mix is growing like crazy. I have 3 maybe 4 plants that have turned brown and are dying off from pressures in the garden, the rest are resilient if not full of holes from caterpillars but also a healthy flight of wasps are intermingling amongst their rows.
The heat is still intense, none of the tomatoes save one set fruit in the exceeded temperature zone. I’m surprised at the one fruit, but its not been expanding much in the week since I first saw it. I’ll keep observations on it.
My yard long beans are still hanging in there. I started with hundreds of saved seed and planted it all out so even though I had lengths of the bean plantings that did not grow or grew poorly there is still a large length of runs with healthy beans that have set pods. They’ve matured enough to turn white in the sun and very puffy as the seed inside has matured.
My rescue Okra packet is still growing slowly. Perhaps the tallest is half a foot tall. But they have now developed deep dark green leaves and look like they’ve finally come around. I have hope yet that I will collect some fresh new viable seed from them to grow out next year to test how their viability and growth habits differ from the poor quality seed I started this years crop with.
The pods on half the radish plants have dried up, the rest are green. With the heat and the sweat from digging out three planting rows by hand for the Fukuoka Grab Bag mix for 2024 I was overheated and came in for a drink and to type this up. I’ll work on starting to harvest their seed another day.
No change in the germination station status for the new crops to try. Bitter Gourds are leafing out the rest are slowly forming leaf buds and getting ready to push out their first true leaves. Overall I still am looking at 50% germination. 18 planted, 9 sprouted.
Wow. Very gripping images came to mind in your latest post “crawling across the ground and over every other plant in quiet desperation as they have now completely destroyed their original food source.” So sorry to hear about all the death and destruction everything is causing. Thank you for the grow reports on the melons, fingers crossed some plants survive this week.
Well I went out in the garden today to see what’s up a few days later.
The ravaging hordes of squash bugs have crawled and discovered the few surviving cucumber plants including the one with three baby cucumbers starting to form.
All cucumber plants are now dead and wiped out.
The ravaging hordes of squash bugs have crawled and discovered the melon plants and are now covering them in great numbers.
Almost every melon plants is now dead, wiped out. The large one that I harvested the two Tuscan style ribbed melons from has a third melon forming very deformed and covered completely in squash bugs.
The squash bugs are less on the watermelon just for the moment but the baby watermelons that are forming are covered in squash bugs.
So far its a genetic wipe out for all my squash, genetic wipe out for all my cucumbers and genetic wipe out for all my melons save the one Tuscan style I harvested two nice tasting melons from… I saved those seeds of course.
The first melon worth of seeds. I knew they would smell when it started fermenting so I covered it tightly in cling film plastic. The expanding gas from fermentation nearly popped the plastic. After the die off from trapped CO2, the plastic went from concave to just as much convex shape sucking back into the jar. I then opened it and pulled out large seed webbing material and then rinsed the seeds under water in a colander. Seeds then dried for two days and placed in a jar. They still smell like arse but that means it has good fermentation endophytes on the seed coats.
The second melon’s seeds starting fermentation and the first melon’s dried down seeds in the collection jar. This was before I saw the squash bug devastation to all the melon plants outside so I had a tall jar expecting to put quite a few melons worth of seed in this seasons melon seed jar.
In the background the single Snake Gourd seedling (Lagenaria siceraria), two Trombetta di Albenga seedlings (Curcurbit Moschata) and the single Armenian Cucumber seedling (Cucumis melo var. flexuosus).
Overhead, they look so nice before they go outside and get ravaged by the pests.
Two of the Bitter Gourd (Momordica charantia)
Two of the Luffa Angled Ridge Gourd (Luffa acutangula) and the final Bitter Gourd (Momordica charantia)
The Armenian Cucumber seedling when I look at the original germination photograph has small brown blotching forming on the cotyledons and first true leaf.
Here it is today
Fortunately a second seedling has emerged and I will have a second one to make observations on and see if it is endemic to the seed packet or a one off.
Botrytis, Sclerotinia, or Alternaria ?
Pseudomonas and Xanthomonas would have a soft mushy texture of the areas as well and these look dry to me.
97F outside. Now all the watermelon are covered in the squash bugs. I had 9 watermelons forming but now they are covered in squash bugs of all development cycles and have been desiccated from being fed on. I may just remove all the watermelon, cucumber, melon, and squash remnants and bin them to force the squash bugs to starve out faster.
How heartbreaking! I’d be devastated if I lost 100% of my cucurbits this year.
And at the same time what an opportunity for future survival of the fittest projects.
All seedlings are now planted outside.
I also bought some very rare Louisiana Evergreen Shallots. Never spent so much on so few bulbs. They all sprouted and all of them are planted outside as well.
I have some of the ground cherries that I planted outside starting to grow. For now the AI phone app just labels them as nightshade.
Basil are all huge, green and full of flower stems and starting to put on seed.
Carrots are still growing strong.
Tomatoes surprisingly have survived the Texas heat and seem to not want to give up growing.
Fukuoka 24’ grab bag spread out in summer for fall garden, perhaps one watermelon sprouted, and a few other unknown plants. The majority of the seeds seems to still be hibernating. I expect a sunflower or two soon.
Harvesting a ton of asparagus bean / Chinese yard long bean. These are all second plantings and are all planted for seed expansion so I already have tripled the amount of seed I started with and only have brought in half the pods to get the kids to go through when they come to me and say they are bored during summer holidays 
OMG, the squash bug invasion, ima gonna have nightmares. Would you be open to trying companion planting? Dot in around your garden, dill, nasturtiums, marigolds, mint, parsley?
Kim my back yard is planted with marigolds. And zinnia. I treat it as the overflow for my front flower garden when spring planting.
Unfortunately the swarm would have laughed at companion planting. They were plague level numbers.
All is not lost, only the squash like families got hit. I lost the cukes but I had managed two melons with fully mature seeds before the melons got wiped out after all squash were consumed.
The carrots, kale, tomatoes, onions, ground cherries, asparagus, fruit trees, radishes, beans, Kang Kong greens, etc. didn’t get touched as they weren’t on their diet radar.
Whew, I thought you had lost everything…
I had watermelon grow over large mint patches last year, no insect touched those melon plants…dint know if it was a fluke, I haven’t observed squash bugs nor striped cucumber beetles, only white flies and they seem to stay over a day, then fly off. My Dads farm in upstate NY used to get Japanese beetles…but insect management wasnt my focus…I just planted, pulled weeds and helped harvest.
Peter, it could be any fungus. Those plants like heat and well draining soil, plentiful airflow and hot sunny days. Any chance you could direct seed? Did the seedling make it?
The luffa is delicious as long as the skins dont get bitter…pick them smallish, no longer than a butterknife. I still peel the skins, then cut into chunks, delicious
sauteed with eggs and greens…make nice sponges too. Mine yeilded two colors of seed, white and black. I’ll see what they do next spring.
Excellent harvest results. I put all my seedlings outside under the real sun as the rays are sterilizing with the various radiation spectrums and have not revisited them as work education requirements sent me to an intense multi week academy. I have looked out the window and seen some of the plants cresting the hugelkultur mound so they are still out there growing to one degree or another. At this rate I’ll have to wait for fruiting to see what plant is doing well. I can tell one in particular is very vigorous so whatever fruit it grows and reminds me of what plant it was will definitely get saved and placed into rotation in future gardens.
Great gardening, and happy to see the fruits. I’ll be sharing seeds too, from the luffa.
Shoe for scale
This is the plant that’s going absolutely bonkers in growth. No flowers yet, just vegetative expansive growth.
Off each of the sides of this photo are shoots going exploring in different directions. The top left of the photo has one shoot that found the plum tree and started growing up it aggressively. That tree had the European grape vine out and find it and grow some vines intermingled into that particular plum tree. So the positioning is ripe for this plant to cross from plum tree to the grape vine against the back fence if it decides to keep on vegetatively expanding.
There is one plant hole which is dried up and the plant never thrived or grew after transplanting.
There is another plant hole that has 1/3 the vegetative growth as the plant above but its already been setting flowers ignoring the heat and drought.
It even has its first fruit forming.
All plants have zero watering, sprays, care outside of the initial germination station time, and the hardening off time before transplanting into the ground outside.
