Growing Pink Banana Squash

Pink Banana Squash- 9 weeks old

Nothing cheers me up more than a garden nursery.  What cheers me up even more is when said nursery has a basket of Botanical Interests seeds on sale because they expired two weeks earlier. Well, I'm one for a deal! True true that they say old seeds don't germinate at a great rate... I say so what.  I only grow one or two plants, and the seed packets have so many more than two plants. So doing the math, I'd say I'm likely to succeed!
Enter the Pink Banana Squash. If you are reading this page, you have probably done an internet search already.  That means that you have seen the many pictures of people struggling to hold up a giant pink oblong blimps.  I hope the 14-year old inside you giggled as much as I did.  Let's just say the squash looks like something out of a tacky romance novel.

Naturally, I cannot wait for this plant to grow.  It is tucked in the corner of a raised bed on a south on an east facing hill.  It took about a week to sprout.  March 16, 2015 was the day it peeped up from the ground.  Every year I struggle with squash because of the ubiquitous powdery mildew.  This year I am trying something new.  Equipped with a three dollar spray bottle from Home Depot, and a solution of 25% milk to 75% water I am planning on spraying the plant every two weeks (more likely once a month).

UPDATE June 3, 2015:
I picked this first squash on June 3, about 12 weeks after it sprouted.  I was really worried that the plant was not setting additional fruit, so I picked this massive squash early.
UPDATE June 5, 2015:
The first signs of powdery mildew are showing.  I'm going to spray the leaves with the mild milk solution this evening.  Cross your fingers it does the job.  Though there are clearly signs of some leaf burrowing bugs too.  I'm going to focus on the mildew first, then attack the bugs.

Clove Oil & Cucumbers-- Bad Match

I recently blogged about my foiled plans to use water and clove essential oils to attack a terrible powdery mildew issue with my snow peas and how I could have killed my neighbors koi fish. I decided to try a different method to administer the clove oil to the mildew. This time I added a few clove oil drops along with wintergreen and rosemary essential oils to a couple cups of water. I soaked a rag and administered the concoction to each leave. But my cukes were growing along side my peas so inevitably the cukes got a bit of the potion too. Well, the next day the cukes had white splotches where the potion had splashed. Some leaves turned brown and shriveled. Lesson learned! Stop using essential oils on my plants! In other news, the koi are still alive. 

Powdery Mildew and How I Could Have Killed My Neighbor's Koi

Snap peas are in full effect (actually snow peas: I bought seeds from a small seed business in Old Town asking for sugar snap peas and apparently they thought it was find to give me snow peas instead.  Bummed out a bit about it.  Sadly I doubt I'll ever buy seeds there again.).   My dad and I constructed my first excellent trellis from nails, old wood and string.  Awesome.  Planted my peas.  It is lovely.  Then.... attack of the powdery mildew.
Being the quasi-hippie that I am, I googled how to kill powdery mildew with essential oils.  My search led me to believe that misting the leaves with clove oil diluted in water was my solution.  I had clove oil in my stash, so i was ready to go!
As I'm happily spraying away and enjoying the smell of cloves in the evening and thinking to myself how clever I was, my neighbor arrives home.  Now, I live in an apartment and my garden is only 6 feet from  my neighbor's very cool koi pond.  It is in one of those barrels that frats use to keep their natty ice cold on a hot day, so not a very large koi pond.  But it is very nice to look at and adds a lovely fountain sound just outside my bedroom window.
I was promptly informed by my neighbor that clove oil kills fish! Great.  I was in the process of misting clove oil only feet away from innocent fish that could easily be euthanized.   Seriously, who knew?  I'd have been less likely to kill the fish from round-up pesticides.
Luckily I hadn't used all that much and after all I wasn't actually administering the concoction to the fish water.  However, had I used the spray every day, there is a good chance I could have damaged his fish.
Lesson Learned: no playing with essential oils when there are fish nearby!
So, I still have powdery mildew taking over my peas.  sad.