Hey there, are you growing summer squash in your garden right now? I don't know where it ranks

among the top vegetables that home gardeners grow. I know it's not at the top because that's tomatoes,

but I dare say that summer squash is probably pretty high up. Most gardeners I know are growing

some type of summer squash or zucchini in their gardens. It's one of the highlights of the

summer garden for many of us. But here's what I found after eight years of gardening and what I think

you'll probably agree with as well if you've been gardening more than a year or two. Squash or

zucchini can be a feast or famine type crop. The first year, you may have enormous success and you think

this is the easiest crop ever. Or maybe the first year you struggle with a lot of things we're

going to be talking about today and you're wondering how in the world are you going to make this

crop work. You see people with buckets full of squash or zucchini and you're wondering,

what did you do wrong?

I can tell you that I have had my shares of feasts and I have had my shares of famine.

And each year, like most things, I seems like I'm learning something new. But because this is one of those

crops that I think many of us want to have success with in our gardens,

I want to make sure that we can do everything we can to err on that feast side, right?

Not the famine side.

Today, in this next installment of the What Can Go Wrong series, we're going to talk about

what can go wrong with summer squash and zucchini.

We're going to be exploring things from planting to growing to insects to diseases.

There's a lot of steps to talk about today, and I can't guarantee that this year is going to be

a feast for all of us, but at least if we have a little bit of a heads up on what could go wrong,

maybe we can avoid some of these common things and have a feast full of summer squash and

...