worm castings

Wilting Squash And Zucchini Plants

This past week my summer squash and zucchini plants were wilting pretty badly. Now I know these plants often wilt during the heat of the day in direct sunlight, however these were beyond the normal daytime wilting. In fact one plant ended up losing all the leaves and stems but three just sprouting :(

I have plenty of straw mulch around my squash and zucchini plants as to retain moisture in the ground as the root systems of these plants do draw a lot of moisture.

I began to wonder if I had a root fungus as there was no evident signs top side of a problem. We had quite a bit of rain the other week with heavy down pours as well as slower soaking rains due to afternoon and some morning thunderstorms about every day last week.

As a solution I tried mixing some more worm tea, extra strength earlier this week, about 5 ounces of worm castings to four gallons of water. I then went outside the other evening and sprayed my plants at a rate of four parts water, 1 part worm tea.

Yesterday I noticed my plants were not wilting quite as harshly as they had been earlier this week.

This morning, to my amazement, I went to the garden to do some picking and glanced over at my squash and zucchini plants only to see the healthiest looking plants ever. For the first time this week, not only are the plants sitting upright, but the leaves have an inverted look to them as they should in the morning and evening hours.

As for the little guy with only three leaves left, I am happy to report he is not as bald as he is now sprouting a total of five leaves :-)

Now whether there was a fungus issue or other problem, it is amazing to see what adding beneficial microbes to the soil can and will do for your plants.

For more on worm tea products, visit Organic Worm Farm.

Good Luck in Your Gardening Adventures,

Bruce

Leave a Reply

 

 

 

You can use these HTML tags

<a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <cite> <code> <del datetime=""> <em> <i> <q cite=""> <strike> <strong>