Trouble Thursday - 9 August 2018

I've been thinking that I should keep my Harvest Monday posts limited to successes, or near-successes. But I think it's useful for us gardeners to share failures or near-failures too. So I will occasionally post articles like this. Might not always be Thursday (maybe "Woe Wednesday").

First up is my crop of Painted Mountain flour corn. I had such high hopes for this beautiful corn! And it grew so well. But the squirrels found it.

Once I figured it out, I've begun to reduce the squirrel population, but I can't do 24-hour vigilance. So more and more ears are disappearing. They also pull down the stalks in their efforts. The best I'll get is a salvage operation.

These were shucked, and are drying in the sunroom. Some were very immature.

Next up is a visit from the Squash Vine Borer. I went out one morning and found the Yellowfin zucchini had collapsed overnight. Here's the culprit.

Squash Vine Borer caterpillar

And here's the plant. It is trying to regrow after removing the parasites (there actually were two), but not successfully so far.

I pulled another one out of a pumpkin plant. Vining squashes have a better chance of recovery, since they root along the vine. We'll see.

Last, here's what greeted me when I went to look at a volunteer tomato plant that sprung up in the bean patch.

Tomato hornworm caterpillar

There actually were three of them.

They met their fate with a high-altitude brick.

I guess I shouldn't care, since it was only an unplanned volunteer. But I was looking forward to figuring out what kind of tomato it was. The big ugly buggers ate everything, even the fruit. I'm sure the plant won't recover from that.

Okay, that's the bulk of the woes for this week. Thanks for reading!