Three's a crowd

Interesting feature of Hope Seeds seed packages: the are printed with a description of the intended outcome ("nutty flavour", "green ribbed skin"), especially in regards to the edible parts, but no instruction regarding what to do with the contents of the package in pursuit of achieving that outcome.  Most seed companies will tell you at least when to sow, how deeply, how far apart.  Hope Seeds assumes its customers are experienced gardeners, or at least interested enough to have read up on the basic requirements of infant vegetables.  Here are some quality seeds; go for it, they effectively say.  With a few years of gardening experience and a working knowledge of The Vegetable Gardener's Bible, I can cope with this, generally.  I could have used more guidance with the zucchini seeds.  Or I might have kept better records last year, the first time I raised Costata romanesca.

Costata romanesca zucchini - a nice little summer squash

zucchini encroaching on ground cherry

Barry made this raised bed out of 18-inch square paving stones, two wide and five long, so about 7.5 x 3 ft. I thought I would put five zucchini plants in it.  Remember how good those Costatas were last year?, we said.  The VGB gives 18 inches as the spacing for summer squash plants; theoretically, we could have had ten here.  As I mentioned a few weeks ago, only three survived to be transplanted.  This was fortunate.  It took a bit of work on Google's part, but this morning I finally found a site that advised 4 feet between plants of this variety.  So the capacity of this bed is more like.....two, and that allows for a fair bit of touching.  This ground cherry was planted more than 3 feet away from the zucchini that is now muscling in on its territory.  When I thought the zucchini must be as big as it was going to get, I poked a few onions sets into the soil and scattered some carrot seeds in the gap that remained at the end of the bed.  I hope onions like shade.

ground cherry benefits
 from outside assistance

At the other end of the bed is another ground cherry, which is not visible in the top photo due to the massive zucchini leaves that cover it from all directions.  I admit to not leaving enough room between it and the nearest zucchinis, only 1.5 or 2 feet.  The ground cherry should grow to be about 3 feet high.  I pictured it towering above the lowly zucchini leaves that would settle down on either side of it, completely forgetting that these leaves fan out from the ends of tall stalks and would have no trouble getting between a ground cherry plant and the sun.  The fencing worked for a while.  I even beefed it up a bit yesterday with some slightly larger fencing.  Look at all that sunlight on its leaves.  But see also how very small it is next to its rival.  This was poor planning.  I feel the aggression, too.  The stalks are stubborn when I try to push them out of the way, and are covered with sharp spikes.  Any day now those east side leaves are going to tear right through the row cover on the adjacent bed.  The seed package should mention that Costata romanesca does not play well with others.

fruitful vegetable

We harvested three fruits today, almost 3 kg in total, and consumed less than half of one for supper.  More are on the way.  Friends, neighbours, colleagues, have I got a tasty treat for you.  No, really, it's better than the usual zucchini that everyone else tries to unload on you.  Why do we have even three plants?  Next year, two maximum.  In the meantime, we have discussed donning falconer's  gloves and removing the odd leaf that is causing a problem.  We do understand that it will take out a good 200-300 square inches of photosynthetic surface per leaf.  We're just not all that worried about maintaining current productivity levels.