A few days ago the straight neck summer squash started looking funny.
This is what the leaves look like today. (Disregard the dark flecks...they are just dirt that splashed up on the leaves from watering too enthusiastically.)
Today I took the smallest of the leaves that had the white veins (there are only two leaves that still are green all the way through) to the Sumter County Extension Agent. He was a very nice young man. He told me that 1. in South Carolina plants are subject to MANY diseases, diseases that are unknown in Vermont and 2. this looks more like a micro-nutrient that is missing rather than a disease and another thing 3. Don't water and let the water get on the leaves of ANYTHING!
Well, there you go. Doing just about everything wrong. A fourth thing I did wrong was putting the stones in the bottom of the containers. He said that drilling holes in the bottom was a great idea but adding the stones was not. What happens is that when the roots of the plants get down to the stones they reach empty air, not soil, and that cuts off the roots. It makes sense. How sad to have spent the money and energy getting all those stones here to have it be wrong.
This young agent also told me that containers are really not the best way to grow plants in South Carolina. What to do? The soil where we want to plant needs to be excavated six inches deep and a shovel full of soil put into a bucket. Every fifteen feet a hole needs to be dug and soil tossed into the bucket. When the whole area has holes dug up, the dirt is mixed then a small amount is put into a little bag, brought back to the Extension office, a small fee charged, then some weeks or months later we will know what we need to do to "amend" the soil to make it productive in a few years! A few YEARS!
Does this signal the end of the gardening? I don't know. It does rather take the wind out of at least my sails. Dear One was not enthusiastic in the first place so it suits him all right. The nice boy did tell me somewhere that we can find compost. (It is the same place, out near the air force base, where we can buy wood chips. )We are forbidden to have a compost pile here in Pocalla Springs. Sad.
Well, we shall see. The tomato plant has a bacterial infection and should be yanked up. I think I will give it a chance. The squash had a male flower blossom today so I am not willing to give up on the squash yet, either. It would be really a bust if we came to a place where there are three garden seasons every year and we can't grow anything.
My one disappointment when we lived in NC was discovering that locally grown fresh vegetables were not available year round. You are not in Vermont Dorothy 😀
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