by Leslie Cox; Wednesday, October 8, 2014

A check through my Harvest Log for 2014 shows we started picking zucchinis on July 7th. Those ones were ‘Dark Star’. Then came the first of the French heirloom ‘Ronde de Nice’ on the 9th and the hybrid F1 ‘Gold Rush’ on the 15th.

And we have been picking ever since! Well…up until the last ‘Gold Rush’ came off on Oct. 4th, that is. Yesterday we pulled up the plants and put them on the compost pile.

We had had very good production throughout the summer drought on only 14.6 cm (5.8 inches) of rain between May 28th and Sept. 30th. (We did supplement with some hand watering.) Then the weather turned chilly the first week of October with overnight temperatures of 7.5 °C (45.5 °F) or lower and most daytime highs only reaching 15 °C (59 °F). Thought that would be it for the zucchinis as the plants started to wilt.

But here is the funny thing. The weather turned quite warm again and the zucchinis began to rev right back up. They were not about to give up the ghost yet. (Sorry for the Halloween pun!) Even though all of the plants (three each of ‘Dark Star’ and ‘Gold Rush’ and two ‘Ronde de Nice’) were suffering from powdery mildew and had decaying leaves, all but one of the ‘Ronde de Nice’ and one of the ‘Dark Star’ plants had put on new leaves. Not only leaves…they were putting out fresh flowers and small fruits once again. Amazing.

Hopeless situation though. Not even mulching and putting up a hoop house overtop of the zucchinis would have made up for the fewer necessary daylight hours. And our first frost is due almost any time. Last year it was on Oct. 29th. Two years ago it was really early, coming on Oct. 4th. In 2012 it fell on Oct. 14th.

No way the zucchinis could survive a frost.