On flamingos and watermelon

You know when you put your pants on and your toes get caught in the rip in the knee of your jeans? Making you dance around like a confused flamingo until you figure out what the heck just happened? That metaphorically happened to me yesterday. But first we must go back.

Several days ago, after a huge rain…I mean, BUILD AN ARK kind of rain…I noticed a couple of white spots on my squash leaves. I looked, brushed them off with a finger, and then metaphorically brushed them off.

The next day I looked again, and there were more dots…bigger dots starting to join up into large swaths of dot. I decided to investigate.

Powdery mildew.

By the time I investigated there had been lost-shoe-finding, how-many-bites-negotiating, who-had-it-first-mediation and is-the-toothbrush-wet-because-you-used-it-or-were-you-just-playing-with-it-checking, and so it was dark. Too dark to try to help.

That leads us to yesterday morning, very early before bitties and husband are awake, but almost were awakened because I went to spray my squash plants and

EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEK.

There are no pictures. I was in no mental state to take pictures. Let’s just say it spread. It spread a lot. I drastically cut back several plants and removed some that were too coated to even try to save.

And one of the comments on the blog I used to help me diagnose and treat it said it likes not just squash, but zucchini also…which made me look. Not just metaphorically.

DOUBLE EEK.

But the squash weren’t the bad ones…the pumpkins were the bad ones. Oh eek.

*sigh.*

Of all the solutions mentioned found here I decided to go the route of spraying with a mixture of 1/3 milk to 2/3 part water. And I coated those puppies.

I haven’t been outside this morning to check, but I’m hopeful. Thankfully, it looks like powdery mildew isn’t often fatal to the plants, but just frustrating to the season.

{But seriously, what’s new around here??}

 

So here’s what I’m thinking, please allow me to make notes for my next year’s self in this public forum:

-after a big rain, spray the powdery-mildew-prone proactively with milk and water solution (as long as it seems to help this year) the day after the rain.

-as soon as you see a spot PUT ON A MICKEY MOUSE CLUBHOUSE and do something about it right away. {A lot can be done during a Clubhouse, amen??}

-pull smaller, less productive plants earlier in the season. Those tiny ones that I was “giving a chance to live” were covered in the stuff and likely spreading it to the others…probably because they were weaker, I’m guessing. I should have pulled them a long time ago.

-check the lower leaves for the mildew. Those were the worst-infected and some of them I couldn’t even see until I got down there and really dug—probably because they don’t get as much sun.

 

I can’t end on this note. I have to end on a happy.

And this is such a happy for me: bitty E *fra-zeaked out* when I showed her. {And I kind of did, too.  All of us, if we want to be technical.}

So, yeah, this is why I garden. For all the bitties…even of the watermelon variety.