Thank God for QFC because I’d be a piss-poor pioneer (and a damned skinny one, too). That is the sum total of my squash harvest this year. Yeah, I know the red thing is an apple (which actually is from QFC). I suggest you use the stem of the apple as your size gauge. It makes the squash look larger.
How pathetic. I mean, really. One yellow squash?! It’s a crookneck, by the way. I understand if you weren’t quite certain. And three piddling zucchini the size of my little finger? Come on. It’s zucchini for cripe’s sake. And the most disgusting thing about the zucc is that I set out PLANTS in May, while a friend planted some FROM SEED … on the spur of the moment NOT UNTIL JULY … and she has it coming out her ears. Fortunately, she was kind enough to share a couple with me, so I have not passed the summer without fried zucchini. However, I am fading into fall starved of yellow squash. It’s a good thing Kim over at IOG invited me over for squash dinner a couple of times this summer.
And, as for you, Heather over at Idaho Small Goat Garden, well you just pretend you never read this. You’re my homesteading heroine what with your canning and fruit rolling and putting up and 400 ears of corn and laying chickens and eating chickens and pergolas and what all. You even inspired me to put up some frozen sweet corn (which I bought from QFC) and sawed off the cob using the bundt pan the way you do and Mr. Sorry thought I was a genius until I fessed up that I got the idea from you. So you just pretend you never read this post so I don’t have to completely die from embarrassment that I can’t grow a zucchini.
What went wrong? Well, I’m not sure. Like I said, I set out plant starts in May. I put them in the sunniest spot I thought I had. I even (gasp!) watered them because they were near the tomatoes, which I guarded with my life this year. Hmm. Nothing.
Possibly this is some karmic retribution by the bees refusing to pollinate after I mowed off the clover flowers in the yard because I couldn’t stand the “untidiness.” More likely, as I’ve watched the sun patterns on the hill this year, it’s not as sunny there as I assumed. And I already knew the soil was poor. Hmm.
Maybe Santa will bring me some raised beds over in the sunny side yard for Christmas?
Gosh, surely Santa will give you “good points” for honesty and you’ll get those raised beds and maybe some zucchini bread made by someone who actually was successful growing squash this year!
Too funny! My zucchini was bad too. I just think it was a bad year for zucchini and squash. My plants did well but just didn’t fruit like they should have. Even put on a beautiful show of blooms, the fruit just rotted before it became eating size. I am going to order the Problem Handbook for the garden and see if I can figure it out for next year. The apple was nice. lol
No, no, no, no, no and no, Sorry. This is the thing: miniature vegetables! And you are on the leading edge of the zucchini wedge. Each one of those tiny zuccs is chock full of a whole plant-or-more’s worth of goodness. You see, you are actually an astounding success! Snatched from the mouth of de feet.
Ah, so tiny zucchini are the next delicacy, like those tiny cobs of corn!
Ah, but they made for a great still life pic. The apple makes the whole image a thing of wonder.
If only my wife’s Zucchini turned out so ‘well’.
signed … squash hater
We’ve come up with a unique way of using our excess that no one wants to take off our hands. Baking zucchini biscuits for the dog. She thinks they’re the cat’s pajamas.
So sorry, Mrs. Sorry! Loved your still-life tho’…
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Heather & I are good friends and she will agree with me when I comment on her ADD tendencies to wit: she’s a li’l Tasmanian devil on wheels & is constantly multi-tasking because she truly can’t help herself! I do have tons of zucchini, tomatoes, cukes, peppers & acorn squash but some of the other veggies didn’t fare quite so well. Maybe it just boils down to where our priorities lie? I love zucchini anything & other than watering, ignore it until it takes over my garden – that’s the key: indifference.
If you hadn’t said there was an apple in that picture, I’d never have noticed it. I’d have felt sorry for you for the yellow squash, but the zucchini looked pretty darn good. Until you made me see the apple. Those are MICRO zukes! And I’m sorry to say, our yellow squash are about done. I think there are two more out there that might be ready tomorrow. But when all the countin’s done, the straightneck outproduced the zucchini at least two to one if not more. I’m sorry yours were such a bust. But we’re having the “last meal” of squash tomorrow night. Come on over!
Your harvest is better than mine. I don’t have enough sun for veggies. Do try again with raised beds.
Well, at least you got something, all I got was another [yet again] lump of dead green stuff on the compost pile. I think that you did very well.
My name is Jen, and I am a zucchini killer. I sure hope that there are some self help books out there for people like us.
No matter what I do, I just can’t grow them, and everyone else does great. I have tried everything, but I find that buying them at the veggie store is the best.
Jen
Love your post… Very amusing, and I thought piss-poor was only an English thing, obviously not!
I suspect your poor soil will have been the problem… However, did the tomatoes do well? If so, then I’m at a loss…
Minus the one squash, I can see petit treats for a cocktail party with your fall harvest. Chin up, each day bring you closer to the next gardening season!
Had to laugh when I read the title–I moved to the middle of nowhere in Georgia at one point and almost gave up on trying to plant an azalea bush, with all the roots and tangles–all the time thinking I’d have died of starvation that first winter if I were a pioneer!