You're listening to the Beginners Garden podcast. I'm Jill McShehehehe with Journey Withjil.net,

and my goal is to give beginning gardeners the tools they need to grow a rewarding, productive garden. Welcome back to the Beginners Garden podcast. I'm super excited to talk all about squash today. Squash is one of those

crops I just have a lot of feelings about. It's kind of like your kids.

You love them like crazy, but there are some things that plain annoy you. Like no matter how

many times you tell them to put their clothes in the laundry basket, it's a battle you don't ever

seem to win. Okay, well, maybe that's just my family. But I feel that way

about squash and today we're going to talk about it. As you know, if you could probably tell from my

voice, I'm a Southern girl and I grew up eating fried squash every summer. It was one of my

favorite side dishes, something my mom fixed for me, and I still

cannot eat southern fried squash without enjoying every moment. So I'm a big fan of squash. I realized when I

got older that that's not the only way that you can eat squash. In fact, when I was in college,

my husband's mom was cooking zucchini and she cooked it, just sliced, no breading. And I was like,

oh my goodness, how do you have squash without it being deep fried and batter? But no breading,

and she cooked it with bacon. And oh my goodness, it was delicious. So that

would now be my second favorite way to have squash or zucchini. And then when I got even older as an

adult, I learned how to shred squash and zucchini and put it in zucchini bread. And that's another

one of my favorite ways to have this vegetable. So as you can

tell, I love my squash. I love eating it all the different ways, but like I said, nothing can

top southern fried squash. When I first started my garden, I knew that I absolutely had to have a

place for squash in my garden. And as I learned really quickly,

despite my mom growing it, all my years growing up, it's not without its challenges. I've been faced

with squash bugs, squash vine boar, lack of growth, lack of fruit, you name it. There are some challenges here.

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