Every year something new happens in one of my garden beds... Last year it was the cucumber beetle, this year it's rotting zucchini and squash plants. When my plants got nice and big I was looking for first signs of female parts on the plants. I found actually plenty of them and got very excited. When I checked back in two days later, all the tiny zucchini and squash were rotting away.
(sorry I don't have a picture of that - who wants to remember disaster stage right?)
So what do you do when this happens in your garden? (Also read below pictures how to prevent it) Sprinkle dry egg shells and mulch all over the plants base and water throughly. Yes, it's that easy. It worked miracles. See, what the plant is lacking, is some calcium and the egg shells will fix just that!
The next zucchini that showed up after I sprinkled the egg shells looked like this and went all the way. So did the next dozen zucchini and squash!
So how can you prevent this from happening? My grandpa used to collect dry egg shells and kept them in the freezer at all times. Then when he was ready to plant the squash seeds, he would sprinkle the shells in the hole directly with the seed. This way the seed would have plenty of calcium supply right away from the start!
Hope this helps!
