My plant setup for interested folks :
- Two pots – one plant each; I have used 2.5G buckets.
- Organic soil mixed with compost, fish fertilizer, soil from older pot which had beans (read ‘Nitrogen’)
- Choose an appropriate variety. I chose the smaller one as I’m using smaller pots ( “Dhol” variety ) and don’t have an infrastructure to hold heavy veggies
- Trellis – grabbed it for free from a spring/fall cleaning
- 4 ft space ( Now that it’s growing, I think at least 5-6ft horizontally and 8ft vertically. If it grows too big, we can contain it by pruning )
- Plenty Sunlight ( atleast for 5-6 hours )
- Plenty Water
Will keep updated.
5-Jul-2018 : Seedlings emerged. Not sure when I sowed the seeds.
23-Aug-2018 : A pure white flower bloomed in the morning and made my day
9-Sep-2018 : First squash harvest
12-Sep-2018 : Tending to think one plant would be enough. They are branching out everywhere.
14-Sep-2018 : Second squash harvested. Have a couple of pollinated flowers on the vines.
24-Sep-2018 : The plants are loaded with fruits and one with powdery mildew 😦 . The plant on the left is the one that has the most fruits as of today. But, the first two were harvested from the one on the right. It’s picking up on fruiting as well. The mildew is probably creating issues. Milk is one of the home remedies for mildew. It has kind of contained it, but probably needs multiple applications.
27-Sep-2018 : Harvested the third one today. Still experimenting on the number of days I can leave a fruit on the vine. This one’s about 15 days – heavier than the last two and still edible. I also cut one of the plants to the ground today. It was growing weak due to the powdery mildew and spreading it to the other one. Better one than both gone. So, I had to let it go and harvested the 4th one from it. Also, need to keep an eye out for any on the remaining plant.
28-Sep-2018 : I also realized something today, probably a phenomenon with container grown plants. When there are multiple fruits on a plant, they start plumping up from bottom to top on the plant. For example, two of them were growing and others were waiting. When I harvested the third one ( the bottom one), the one after it started growing bigger in size.
30-Sep-2018 : The fourth one.
EnManadhil 