Succession Planting Squash Helped Me Beat the Squash Bug and Have a Full Summer Harvest

foreign it is almost October and I'm still harvesting summer squash and zucchini from my garden and for the most part I pretty much have been all season long but I have to tell you it's not always been that way I battle squash bugs and squash Vine borers to the point where sometimes I wonder if it's even worth it and maybe you're there I've had a lot of people tell me that they've just stopped growing summer squash and zucchini because they're tired of battling the pest or maybe you're also like me and you're an organic Gardener and you don't want to put harmful pesticides on your plants just to get a squash or zucchini Harvest and I've also had people tell me that even the non-organic pesticides don't do anything against these insects either so all that to say this can be a crop that can be difficult especially if you live in an area where you have a lot of pressure from these pests I've had a lot of people ask me then why do I still grow these and how do I make it work years ago I stumbled upon a strategy that's kind of a if you can't beat them join them type of mindset but in my case it's more like if I can't beat them then I'm going to work around them mindset and what I've started to do is utilize succession planting so that I can get squash and zucchini Harvest pretty much all summer now I can tell you this works I've been using it in different degrees for a couple of years but this year I think I've stumbled upon the perfect ideal succession planting for squash and zucchini and I want to share with you how I did it so if you are one that wants to get a lot of squash and zucchini despite the pest pressure this may be a method that you want to employ and this includes no pesticides no sprays and actually very limited hand picking because that's something that we do have to do from time to time but who actually wants to so let me show you what I did this year and maybe this is a strategy you can employ in your garden as well the first thing that I did was I planted early while this bed has carrots and collard greens in it it actually initially had my very first planting of summer squash and you may recall that I started these seeds indoors I show on a video how I did that and I think that made a huge difference because I was able to get a very early Harvest of my first summer squash and the reason why that was important is because the sooner we can get the squash and zucchini into the garden in the spring the longer we're going to have to be able to harvest them before the pest pressure increases squash bugs will start coming out and they'll trickle out early but the squash Vine bore is the one that I really have to work to beat because once it arrives all bets are off and the Squash Harvest is done so to make this work start indoors the right way I started my seeds on March 24th and then I planted the transplants out about three weeks later in our average last frost date is right in the early April so you can get an idea of the timing of that and then I ended up starting my harvest in the middle of of May and that Harvest continued until about mid to late June and at that point in early July I took out the crops that were infested with squash Vine borers and squash bugs and from there I had a blank slate here and it also gave me a chance to plant my next planting so the goal here was early planting and a long Harvest before the pests arrived now one thing that you have to keep in mind if you are doing this early planting is that a lot of times when the squash flowers start to come out early in the spring the pollinators are not there yet and so at the beginning of the Harvest I had to hand pollinate I took a child's paintbrush and I just came out every morning and I transferred pollen from the male flower to the female flower and I had to do that for a few weeks until the pollinators started arriving at my garden so that's one thing you want to keep in mind with in early planting you may have to hand pollinate for a little while but you won't have to hand pollinate most likely for the whole Harvest but do keep that in mind for a good harvest early on next let's talk about the second plating my second planting was right here and this is one that I'm actually still harvesting from but the timing and the steps on this second planting are key in this bed I harvested carrots from the middle part of the bed about mid-june and as soon as I harvested those carrots I planted seeds directly in the garden I didn't do any transplanting at this point it's just not necessary the soil is warm enough so I planted the seeds directly in this bed kept them watered the key here was that as soon as those Sprouts germinated I covered this plant with insect netting and I kept it covered with insect netting until early August and the timing is going to vary based on where you're located I usually keep a pretty close eye on how long the squash Vine bore is active in my area and I have found in general that it's not as active as soon as we get into early August now these crops were actually ready to harvest before August when I started seeing those female flowers come out I actually did lift up the insect netting and I did some hand pollinating for a couple of weeks to get an early Harvest underneath the insect netting here but then when I took off the insect netting I was kind of taking a risk but you got to do some tests in your garden I took off the insect netting and of course that time of year the pollinators are very active and I didn't have to do any more hand pollinating the rest of the season and this as you can see these are actually two plants we have a zucchini plant and a squash plant and they have outgrown this three by six portion of the raised bed where it was planted in but I've had Harvest ever since probably the end of July and now we're what at the end of September early part of October that's a pretty long Harvest and I've seen some squash bugs here and there and definitely not any squash Vine borers so really this planting has been relatively free of pest pressure the key was to make sure and plant as soon as I had a bed space available and then cover with insect netting until the risk was no longer present for heavy pest infestations now I'm sure from season to season this may change but for this year this worked out great but honestly I had no idea how long that these crops were going to last I wasn't sure I felt like I was kind of rolling the dice there with the squash Vine bores and I wasn't sure if maybe I'd taken the insect netting off too early so I went ahead and planted a third planting it's kind of hard to tell the difference at this point but in this part of the bed I had that second planting the one that I'm still harvesting from squash and zucchini but then in the end of this bed again this is a three by six space this whole bed is actually 18 feet but it's divided up into three sections in this part I direct sewed more seeds of the squash and zucchini can you see the little bumblebee there they are still active at the end of the season which is another reason you don't have to hand pollinate or at least I don't have to at the end of the season but I play planted another set of squash and zucchini on this side and they are actually just starting to get going these crops are kind of at the end I feel like the second planting because they have produced so much so I have the other ones that are coming along at the far side of the bed to just give me some extra insurance again I did not have to cover those with insect netting I ended up planting those actually I think at the beginning of August so as soon as I took the insect netting off of the second planting I direct sewed the third planting in the ground those seeds come up so fast because the soil is warm and so that's another benefit of these succession plantings is that they're really more hands off especially if you do it later in the year where you don't have to worry about hand pollinating and then you can hopefully not have to worry about insect netting especially for this later planting and I've had more squash and zucchini this year using this method than I've ever had before planning and planting three different succession plantings may seem like a lot of work but I can tell you it's not near as much work as hand picking squash bugs and trying to take care of your plants and protect them from squash Vine borers and a lot of times that's futile anyway I'm telling you this is the most hands-off squash and zucchini Harvest I've ever had but the key is to do the planning ahead of time I didn't have to wonder when I was going to plant my squash because I knew from my planning that I was going to harvest carrots and then once those carrots harvested I knew that I would be able to plant the next planting of squash all of this actually comes from me in the winter time it's when I'm planning out my entire Garden so that way when it comes to actually planting I know when I'm going to plant and I'm going to know where I'm going to plant to be able to hopefully get a harvest like this that lasts a long time through succession planting and this is a method that I teach in my online Garden planning course dream to Garden we open it every February so if you are interested in that then make sure to you sign up for the wait list we'll put the link in the description and sometimes we do have openings for a brief time so still get your name in there if you're interested in this at all but for me planning out these successions ahead of time has made a huge difference in the amount and the length of my Harvest and going into the last month before our first frost date and I'm still getting so much summer Harvest going it is completely worth all the planning involved but if you're interested in more information on growing squash and troubleshooting squash you might be interested in this podcast episode squash what can go wrong and if you want more how-to videos like this one make sure to like And subscribe and I will see you on the next video foreign [Music]

Channel: Beginner's Garden - Journey with Jill

Views: 4,022

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Id: 6ChMReLgLYM

Length: 9min 59sec (599 seconds)

Published: Wed Oct 19 2022