It’s that time again. You ask, and I pretend to know things and answer your burning questions. It really is so much fun to open my inbox and see the wide variety of questions you guys have. Reminds me that my readers are so diverse and pretty dang awesome. So keep those questions coming and I’ll keep racking my brain for answers. As always, please pipe up if you have any input or are knowledgeable when it comes to any of the following questions:
Hey Mavis! I am overwhelmed with squash! Any recipe for canning squash?
~Dee from Facebook
I can it in a relish that is so freakin delicious you might eat it with a spoon. It’s called Zucchini Relish, but you can sub in a different type of squash and I’m sure it would be just as awesome!
And in case you are wondering How to Freeze Zucchini, I’ve got all the secret tips and tricks just for you!
On the topic of swimming in zucchini, do you have any tips for squash pests? I have the worst time with some sort of bug that bores into the stem and kills my plants. They always start out lush, green, and producing fine and then about a month later all of them are wilted and dead with their stems chewed up!
~Linda
I’m all too familiar with squash bugs {UGH!}. They are nasty. But lucky for you, through my trial and error, I’ve discovered a thing or two that works. I wrote a post all about How to Deal with Squash Bugs that might help you.
I know this is a random question, but I have a teenage daughter with a birthday coming up. We’re hosting a party at our house and I swear I saw you post something about a great game for teens but I can’t find it anywhere. Help!!
~ Lisa
It’s called the Frozen Tee Shirt Game and it. is. awesome. I can’t even tell you how much entertainment you’ll get from watching them play it. I’m still laughing thinking about it. I do guarantee a good time for everyone, but I also don’t recommend playing this anytime except the summer. Those kids get cold!!
I have tried growing garlic the last few years and every time I pull them out of the ground they aren’t that much bigger than the individual cloves I put in the ground. Any idea what I’m doing wrong? Not planting deep enough or maybe not watering them enough?
~Jennifer
Here are my tips for How to Grow Garlic. I’m wondering if you are starting with a bad product? I’ve never had much luck with bulbs I’ve purchased at the store. I like to buy certified garlic bulbs so I know exactly what I’m getting. Botanical Interests and Territorial Seed have a great selection. Maybe that right there would help because I’ve never had an issue with garlic growing like crazy, so I’m wondering if it’s the starts themselves?
I went on vacation so I missed how your survival food experiment turned out. Any chance I can get a quick update?
~Karen
I’m not gonna lie – I’m so glad that’s over!! Truthfully though, it actually turned out to be a pretty fun experiment. I lost a little weight, learned a thing or two about myself and my eating habits, and broke my caffeine addiction. So all in all, I’d say it was a pretty successful 30 days. You can read all about the results in this post: What I Learned Living off a 30 Day Emergency Supply of Food.
Mavis I am using your heirloom tomato sauce recipe and making a big batch today using veggies from my garden! Thanks for the awesome recipe.
~Henrietta
The Heirloom Tomato Sauce recipe is the only one my family will eat anymore. No more canned junkity junk from the store. There’s just something about plucking all the ingredients fresh from your garden and then whipping up a nice big batch that leaves me feeling so accomplished. I hope your batch was a yummy success!
Erika says
I’m pretty sure that Linda was asking about squash vine borers, not squash bugs. I’ve read that they’re most common east of the Rockies, especially in the South. Vine borers are actually a moth (that looks like a wasp, almost) that lays their eggs in the soil by the roots of your squash (and other hollow-stemmed plants). Their larvae hatch and bore into the stems by the base of the pant and chew and chew around inside until they’ve killed your squash plant. They look wilty because they’re not able to carry water up to the leaves as well when they’re being chewed from the inside. You can tell if they’re in there because you can see frass, which looks kind of like wet sawdust where they went in. Other than slicing in with a razor and digging them out when they’re small, I’ve had lousy luck with controlling these horrible pests. It’s super hard to catch them all. I tried growing our squashes under a bug control net this summer, but not enough light was getting in and they weren’t flowering. When I took the cover off, in came the bugs. Any other advice would definitely be awesome!
Joy says
Mavis I just made your zucchini relish recipe again this year. Thanks for sharing all
the great recipes.
Caroline says
Jennifer,
I don’t get heads either, and I’ve used great starter garlic. However, I’m in zone 10 and there’s not hope for it here… Where are you at?
Jennifer Meyer says
I’m in zone 7b (Virginia) so I think it was because I was trying to use garlic from the grocery store.
Kat says
Squash beetles are my problem here in Georgia. This is the third year they have devastated my squash, zucchini and cukes. This is when organic gardening is a real pain! I’ve pulled those lady bug like suckers off my hand, used NEEM oil, horticultural soap, dish soap with cayenne pepper and I’ve planted squash all over my yard (front and back) to distract them from my main garden. All with no luck. Next year I’m going to skip growing anything but tomatoes during the summer and salad greens during the fall and early spring in hopes that I can plant a garden again the following year.
Lisa Millar says
In regards to the garlic question.
My first season of growing the bulbs were small…
But my cousin who was growing them on a much larger scale advised me to dust the garlic patch with some lime as garlic likes a ‘sweeter’ soil.
Since then I have had lovely big bulbs, and I have been saving a few for each following season.
Hope this helps.
One cannot have too much garlic! 🙂
Mavis says
Thanks for the tip, and I agree. Bring on the garlic!!
Jennifer Meyer says
Woo hoo! My question made the blog hehehe! Sounds like my issue was starting with garlic cloves from the grocery store. Next time I will try with actual starters and see if I have better luck. I just thought it was funny that it grows actual heads of garlic; they are just really small with super tiny cloves lol!