Prune Zucchini to Increase Production - Prevent Powdery Mildew & Prevent Blossom End Rot

[Music] what is going on everybody welcome to another episode here handi and my gardener Channel I am so excited for this episode because this episode is going to be answering a question that is constantly coming into our inbox about zucchini or summer squash so zucchini and summer squash the bush varieties are always on people's to grow list the problem is is that so so many people are so few people can get them to grow successfully all season long and so many people are plagued with issues and one of the biggest issues is overcrowding and in powdery mildew so these are two huge problems and they can all be solved so easily and that's why I'm really excited for this view it's not gonna be a long one I do promise I mean that I know I don't seem you guys enjoy her along your videos but this one really does not have to be that long so what we're going to talk about is defoliating your zucchini to increase plant health increase production pollination and decrease powdery mildew this is something that will help you out I promise and it's something that looks very drastic and something that looks terrible to do but it will pay off a huge huge dividends I do promise you so behind us as you know we have densely planted our zucchini this is something that is just planting it normally is daunting enough but we've gone ahead and and planted it about 25 percent denser than it's normally recommended and what that what happens is you get a ton of overlapping leaves and those overlapping leaves are no good you do not want overlapping leaves you do not want leaves from one plant going and going over to another plant it oftentimes looks very good to have a very healthy full lush bed of leaves but the underlying the underlying truth to that is that it's really not that good it's not that good health-wise it looks good aesthetically but one thing that's going to happen is you're going to have very poor airflow and so I'm when I bring you guys in I'm going to show you exactly what I'm talking about about airflow it is some of the most poor is one of the most important things to growing squash effectively at one end zucchini as well because the airflow is what will dry out the leaves it will keep the fungus and mildew down on your leaves so powdery mildew is what plagues a ton of cards especially coming into the hot humid part of summer this is that is when everything starts going downhill when it comes to squash and zucchini so having that airflow is so important and got cutting out those crossing branches or branches that are really doing nothing but just crowding things that those have got to go another thing is that what happens is that oftentimes pollinators have a very difficult time finding the flowers the reason why flowers are yellow is to attract the pollinators and if you have nothing but foliage it gets me very difficult for pollinators to find the flowers because it's a visit it's actually a visible attraction and so those flowers are there to show bees and what most a lot of bees but other other insects as well to to kind of draw them in and so what happens is that you just have so much foliage they really can't navigate properly throughout that that dense jungle and you'll have a lot of pollination issues and one way you'll know you have a lot of pollination issues is if you see a lot of female fruit I'll show you those as well and you start to see a lot of the female fruits start to form but they get really soft at the tip drop their flower and then eventually rot away if you're farming female flowers there are female fruit and you have male flowers as well for successful pollination but you're not getting the fruit chances are you just have too much foliage and you need to need to cut it out a little bit and then the final thing is when you defoliant more growth oftentimes our zucchini and squash do super super well in the early spring we first plant them they put on the huge bumper crop of fruit or well squash is also fruit in my book so they put on a ton of squash and zucchini and then they kind of peter out they kind of fizzle out at the end and you just kind of say well I got what I got but did you know you could probably keep your harvest going all summer long we do and it is amazing we can get all we can get squash going all season long up until the cold weather comes a fall and it is truly a blessing to have in the garden and one way we do that is by constantly pruning the lower leaves and encouraging more upward growth because even though they're a bush they do grow upwards and if you don't if you don't discourage that growth it's just going to stay there and it's going to stop producing so come on a close I'll show you exactly what I'm talking about and that way you can visibly see exactly how you how much you can defoliate and it's totally fine it looks bad I promise but it will pay off in huge dividends so let's go so this is one pile of two that I actually left here just to visibly show you just how many leaves I took off the other pile is is over there on that side but as you can see I took off all of these lower leaves because what you'll start to see is these lower leaves they don't have access to a lot of Sun and that's when they start getting the powdery mildew they don't get good airflow and this this right here is not a good sign so I'm gonna come in here anything that's near the ground base level I'm gonna come in here and pinch these off and you can see I have kept some that are out further that's totally fine these ones on the on the exterior of the bed here I'll let them trail over they're totally fine but you can see here I've come in and I have just totally D foliated and that what that's going to do is it's going to increase like I said more of this new growth here see all this new growth that's because we do foliated and you can see here the reason why I did so is because we've got some we've got some some of that blossom end rot and you can see blossom end rot right there this is one of those things that people think they don't have enough calcium in their soil or they think they're not watering enough really it's the pollination issue most likely if it's on squash it's a pollination issue if it's a tomatoes it might be calcium I might be watering but with you know with with squash about 85 90% of the time it's pollination just you're not the pollinators are not getting in to touch the the flowers like they should so over here you can see we've got lots more coming on now really looking a whole lot better and you can see here these were the first ones to come on they were just not getting pollen in enough to see all these right they're just too much foliage the foliage was too dense so yep that's that is the things you look for and once you fix that you're going to really again just be so rewarded look at all this look at all this new growth beautiful these have been pollinated these are growing they're beautiful they're not they're not dying but just you got to come in here and you got to take this stuff off you got it to foliate and again I just look for I always look first off that's criss crossing so I see one right now that I missed and that's coming from this plant all the way over here and it's criss crossing it's criss crossing right here see how big this leaf is I'm gonna pull this leaf back there we go so there's a huge leaf and we've opened that up now so it's going to allow just so much more airflow and trust me it's got plenty of leaves you can generally take off about 30 to 40% of its leaves and it will do just fine because these leaves are massive they're generating a ton of energy for this plant and it's going to do very very fine and then coming over here here's another quick example I just saw this one over here you see this one it's got a leaf coming over here it's really kind of encroaching on this plant here no need to have that in there so we're gonna take that off and here's another one see this one's coming from this plant all the way over here really clustering this out I might take that and rip that off there so there we go so now I'm telling you what people they freak out they they kind of worry but you know what that is going to be a healthy healthy zucchini so that is some good airflow in there I'm pleased with that that something that that really will do well so this is this is the secret to getting your zucchini to grow all season long and it looks like there's hardly any leaves but trust me the leaves that are here are perfectly fine and the plants really are not noticing a difference in fact they're probably actually healthier than they were before so there you go there is how you can increase production all season long for use at key in summer squash as well as decrease blossom end rot and decrease diseases like powdery mildew it is super easy and I do hope you try it and I also hope that you'll let me know how it works for you either in the comments box below or in an email or a message on Facebook and it just makes my day to know that people are implementing these things and having success that's why we do what we do so also I do hope you enjoyed this video and if you did it really does help to give a thumbs up I know people don't like to hear that but as a content creator YouTube wants to see you enjoying our content and thumbs up means our our video will be shared with other people that have not yet seen the video so that is a huge huge thing that you can do to help our channel grow and help this video go out to more people if you think that the information was valuable if you also did give it a thumbs up let us know what you liked let us know what you learn that is huge for us because it allows us to know kind of the direction for future videos and so that is a massive thing for us because this type of content only comes about when you guys ask questions or tell us what you're struggling with so that is huge for us so as always I do thank you for watching this video commenting and giving a thumbs up and and if you did really really enjoy it share with a friend that always just makes our day as well cuz uh well birds of a feather flock together and I'm sure you got some friends that could use this tip so anyways I'll talk to you later this is Luke from the mi Gardner channel reminding you to grow big or go home and we'll catch y'all later see ya bye [Music] you [Music]

Channel: MIgardener

Views: 1,465,071

Rating: 4.954711 out of 5

Keywords: BER, trick, how to grow zucchini, production, pruning, how to grow squash, squash vine borer, tricks, blossom end rot, Premiere_Elements_15, zucchini, increase, tips, howto, migardener, blossom, bush squash, how-to, tip, squash, pruning squash, prune, powdery mildew, how to prune zucchini

Id: mqkpifoEUfc

Length: 11min 12sec (672 seconds)

Published: Sat Jul 15 2017