I was hoping to be posting some chipper news and charming photographs right about now (mid-July) but mother nature had other plans. Our hoped-for pumpkins, pictured earlier in my blog with much hope and fanfare have dwindled to one or two "survivor" plants.
The culprit: our community of squirrels. Our neighbor tosses out fistfuls of high quality peanuts in the shell for them every day.They pilfer from our bird feeders and grow nice and plump. It seems so unjust that given their gourmet and readily available diet they would see fit to dine on the stems of our pumpkin plants. I can appreciate the disappointment our ancestors felt when they made offerings to their gods and still saw their crops fail.
What gives? We've grown pumpkins for many years with nary a problem. We live peacefully among the squirrels and in fact enjoy their daily antics. Interestingly, our first pumpkin crop came from buried squirrel food, by the very same critters that are now the crops undoing. It feels as if we've invited a guest for dinner and they emptied out our fridge as they headed for the door.
Lessons learned? I'm still working on that. Perhaps I'll have some answers by my next post.
nice post. thanks for your thoughts. A friend of mine is having trouble with her tomatoe plants. They are in planters and grow on her back porch. They are growing and rotting before even ripe - ALL of them. any thoughts?
ReplyDeleteThank you Nichole for reading and posting to my blog!
ReplyDeleteAre your friends plants rotting or are the tomatoes (the fruit) themselves rotting? Over watering can overtax a plant so that is one possibility. Are the leaves turning yellow? Under watering usually results in everything turning brown.
This website is chock full of great advice http://www.tomatofest.com/tomato-diseases-pests.html
It should help your friend diagnose her problem. Please keep me posted!