the garden: sad squash dead

Ben asked me a few weeks ago how I rank myself as a gardener, on a scale of 1 to 10. I gave myself a 4. I've got the basics down. Plant it. Water it. Fertilize it. Weed it. Eat it.

But the more complicated stuff? Soil pH testing. Grow lights. Insect defense. I don't even know where to begin. And I'm not sure I'd even want to take my hobby to the next level and invest so much time and money into all of that. At some point that would defeat one of the best things about gardening: inexpensive food.

My latest garden failure? My yellow squash plant.

I started it from seed in the spring, and it was doing well in its pot. I harvested exactly one squash, if you remember. And then it got covered with these disgusting squash bugs. I tried to kill them with Sevin dust. (I know, I know -- don't lecture me about pesticides.) But in the end, the bugs won, the plant shriveled up and died, and I am sad.

I suppose I'll try again next year. (I still have an almost-full packet of seeds, after all.) Lesson learned? Apparently you have to pick the squash bugs off, one by one. So I'll have to kill those things as soon as I see them. (But let's be real. I'm not going to be touching any bugs. That sentence should read: "Send my husband outside to kill those things as soon as I see them.")

So I'm bummed about the squash. But at least I have about a dozen tomatoes in my kitchen window to remind me that my garden has had successes along with the failures!