Do squashes sprawl?

Okay, maybe that's a dumb question, but I'm a newbie, so I don't know.

I took the garden cloche off one of my zucchini hills because the plants were getting pretty crowded in there. When I came back a while later, instead of an upright stem, they were sprawled on the ground. I watered them right away, thinking maybe they were just dehydrated.

Are squashes not supposed to grow upright? Should I put them in a tomato cage or stake them or something?

I sprayed them with pepper spray. I hope the varmints leave them alone. Today I found some excavation sites at the foot of my potato plants.

I think I see some flower buds forming on my biggest zuke plant!

just let them spread. i remember once seeing a bush type zucchini
somewhere but doubt it woujld grow as well as the regular kind. do you use the flowers in the kitchin??

This is actually one way a squash plant can survive the vine borer. It lumps itself along, re-rooting as it goes. If the first part of the vine dies, the next part may be fine.

.... and it depends on the variety. The ones described as "compact" tend to sprawl less, but even those will start to sprawl a bit if the season is long enough.

We got quite a bit of rain last night. The ground's still damp, and the zucchini are a little more upright. So maybe a lot of it was just dehydration.

I still wonder if I should train it to go up a tomato cage, just to keep the zukes off the damp ground.

Squash just don't grow upright..when the posters above said that they are more compact, that simply means that they don't have very long vines...they'll still sprawl, and the squash should be just fine on the ground.

They've been growing that way for thousands of years. If you're concerned about overly damp ground, spread some straw around the plants as mulch. I've been picking squash for nearly a half century, and have never taken any measures to keep them off the ground.

I'd be more worried about pests.

Some squash, like buttercups or acorn squash are the vining top and will put out little curling tendrils that cling to everything. Others, like zucchinni and crookneck squash tend to be the mounding type. You can grow these vertically but you need to coax them upwards or use a cage. I'm attaching a link to the square foot gardening site.
If you click on the "Mel's column" button on the left you'll find an article about growing zucchini vertically:

http://www.squarefootgardening.com/

I'm also worried about critters eating my zucchini. They've already started excavating for potatoes.

What type of critters do you suspect?

Something that digs into my potato mounds, chomps sprouts to the soil, or makes them disappear entirely, and eats vegetable leaves.

Oh, and I've tried Shake-Away. If anything, it *attracts* critters to my yard!

Sounds like moles or gophers to me. We have both here in Los Alamos, NM, but for some reason I get only gophers. They love potatoes -- good taste! They are hard to get rid of. The only way that really works well for me is trapping. At least, if you don't like poisons, which I don't. See the movie Caddy Shack and you will get a feeling for what they can do to your head.
Let's hope they aren't gophers. Poisons work on them, but they also work on your and your neighbors' pets. Cats work very well on gophers. If you don't have a cat, get one. Hopefully a good hunter. Having a dog with access to your garden is usually enough to scare the gophers away. Dogs aren't necessarily so good for the garden though. I am told that miniature dashounds will go after gophers and rid you of them.
As for your squash wilting, I have the same problem here in Los Alamos. Our dry weather and hot sun during the day sucks the water out of them. They freshen up at night if the soil is wet. Only mine don't wilt anymore now that I got my drip irrigation system. It seems to put enough water in the right place at the right time to stop the noontime wilts. Whether you can stop the wilts or not, though doesn't seem to hinder the zucchini production too much as long as they have enough water to grow.

I have FIVE cats, but they're indoor cats. I have tried putting some of their fur out in the garden, but the critters keep coming back. I also have a neighborhood cat that waltzes through my backyard regularly. You'd think all the cat scent would scare the varmints off, but obviously not.

Hot pepper wax helps keep them from chomping on my vegetables, but they still dig holes.

I haven't had any trouble with gophers on squash. I guess they don't like it. The generally don't bother tomatoes, unless they decide to build a tunnel where your tomato plant is growing.

I think you need a good hunting cat, since you clearly like cats. I know conventional wisdom in the US is that cats should stay inside, but conventional wisdom in Europe is that cats need access to the outdoors. A friend in Zurich could not adopt a cat at the local shelter until she guaranteed the cat could go outside.

And cat's don't dig up, sleep on and eat your vegetables, which unfortunately, dogs do.

Gophers & moles tunnel up from the bottom rather than digging down from the top. Rabbits will eat the plant down to the soil, but they usually don't dig into the soil when they are feeding Sounds more like racoons, porcupines or possums. They have the hands/claws to dig in from the top. Sometimes they are looking for worms or grubs in the soil and eat the potatoes along with it. Racoons, porcys and possums won't be frightened away by a cat, in fact cats are often killed by racoons.

White_Hydrangia, if you think you may have rabbits eating the plants on top, plant a border of nasturiums around the garden. Rabbits won't go through the nasturtiums. Can you put chicken wire around the affected garden area? We had to cover our bulbs and tubers with chicken wire when we gardened in the mountains. The plants leaves and vines will grow through the wire, but the critters usually can't get through the wire to dig up an eat the bulbs. We covered the chicken wire with mulch so that it wasn't visible. You may need to keep up the hot pepper wax spray until your visitors choose to go elsewhere.

pajaritomt, "conventional wisdom in Europe" varies depending on the country/neighborhood. I have many aunts and cousins in Europe. They are required to keep their cats indoors unless on a leash.

We have three indoor cats, one of whom I walk outside on a leash with harness. The other two refuse to go outside when given the opportunity.

I'll be able to do a lot more next spring. I plan to plant garlic, marigolds, and other plants that animals and bugs don't care for. This year I started late, and I just wanted to get something in the ground before it got to be too late to plant.

I won't let my cats out. They're not used to the outside, and I'm afraid of them getting lost/hurt/etc. The yards around me are filled with dogs, some of them quite aggressive. My cats have no natural fear of dogs. There are two busy streets a block or two away. My cats have no knowledge of cars. And there are some trouble causing teens a block away. Add to that danger from bears, foxes, cougars, coyote and various other wildlife. I don't think many places in Europe have to worry about bears and lions invading their yard.

Besides, all of my cats were adopted from shelters, and in each case I had to sign a contract saying that they would be indoor cats only.

My first two cats are from the humane society and a rescue group. The adoption agreement states that I must keep them indoors unless they are on a leash and harness (they can slip out of a collar). I've trained one to walk on a leash and she enjoys an occasional outing. She used to be a stray and is used to the outdoors. The one that we raised from a kitten has never lived outside and yowls in terror when we try to take him for a walk. The third is a formerly ferocious feral that we trapped last fall and rehabilitated. (He was displaced by a housing development and was starving when we trapped him.) He's not interested in going outside again.


I understand about just wanting to get something in the ground. We had a late start with our community garden bed and were unable to prepare the ground as well as we would have liked. Next growing season will be better! Good luck with this year's critters! In the meantime, you might want to place some potted marigolds around the garden.

My Maine Coon's fierce, but he's 10 years old. He might not be a match for a younger, quicker critter. My two black sibling cats started out as feral kittens who were socialized as pets. I'm afraid if I let them out, they might revert back to feral.

And the other two are Ragdolls, and I'm told that you NEVER let Ragdolls outside. They are passive indoor cats, and may not even try to defend themselves.

Besides, when I was a kid, we had cats. We always let them out, which is just what you did back then. They never lasted long before they got run over, got into rat poison, or just plain disappeared. It always devastated me when that happened, and I promised myself that I would always keep my cats inside where they were safe.

I wonder if I could get lizards or snakes to deal with the bugs. I woke up today with more spider bites, and the one from last week is still red and nasty out several inches. Trouble is, my spider hunters might fall prey to my cats. They may not quite know what they're doing, but the instinct is still there.

That is just messed up, that you're getting bitten by spiders during the night. Wasps, birds, and some little rodents eat spiders. But I wonder what is drawing the spiders...

We had to bomb our last house for indoor spiders one year. Just seemed to have a billion of them out of nowhere.

I think they used my house as the set for a science fiction movie. Maybe this is where they were filming Arachnophobia II -- The Return.

Is there a pattern between the weather outdoors and the appearance of the spiders in the house? Do they tend to appear more in some rooms, like bathrooms, than in others? When I lived in Nevada, the spiders would come into the house looking for water during the dry, hot summers and warmth during the snow season. They would hang out under the house and under the deck during the cooler, moister weather.

I'm wondering if they would stay outside if they had suitable habitat.

I'm wondering if it has to do with their tearing up a couple blocks of green belt over my fence. I have an *incredible* amount of wildlife on my property. I should sell tickets. We have a Butterfly Pavilion here. Maybe I could make my fortune on Spiderville.

With all the spider bites I've gotten, how come I haven't gotten any superpowers yet? Being able to do that web thing would sure help me during my karate matches.

Not fair. I got cheated. Peter Parker became a superhero, and I just became itchy and insomniac.

If a greenbelt area near you has been destroyed and you have garden habitat, then it would seem logical that the homeless critters would move into the nearest habitat they could find - yours! Can you plant a "target crop" away from you garden to distract the critters that are eating it?

The property behind my condo complex used to be a few acres of orchard, garden and chicken yard. The owners sold out to a developer. We asked permission to bring in a local gleaning organization to harvest the fruit and vegies for the food bank before they tore everything down, but the construction firm threatened us with trepass. Over 100lbs of fresh ripe fruit went to the dump.

The birds and squirrels were suddenly without home or food at the end of fall. I used to throw a handfull of sunflower seeds on the deck to keep the cats amused watching the birds & squirrels. We used to get four or five finches. After the demolition of the back property, we suddenly had about 30 finches fighting for that handful of seeds! All the squirrels and possums showed up on our deck as well, followed by the starving feral black cat.

I hope you at least did something to help the poor cat. My two black cats started out life as ferals. They were taken into foster care as kittens to socialize before I adopted them from the shelter. You should have called a news team in about that company dumping good food rather than sharing it with the needy. That borders on immoral.

I barely had time this year to put in a couple rows of veggies. Next year I'll be able to plan things better.

If I get a chance and can remember, I'll ask the neighbors if they've had trouble with bugs and varmints.

The former feral is now a fat & happy housecat who has become part of our family. All the rescue groups and foster homes were full because they had taken in rescued animals from hurricanes katrina & rita. I spent many chilly hours in the garage keeping the cat company and getting him used to humans.It took about two months to tame him to the point he could be handled in any fashion. He's quite the little snuggler now. I 'm proud of how far he has come in the past year. He's still wary of strangers and goes into hiding when the doorbell rings. His coat has turned over twice. The matte,wire haired texture of the fur he was wearing when trapped has been replaced with a shiny, silky coat.

Our local news stations weren't interested in covering the story of the wasted fruit. We let the city know about the incident. With the current housing shortage, they didn't seem to care.

Fortunately we have several good gleaning groups in the area who do manage to harvest quite a lot from landscaping that the residents don't want to bother with. They scout the neighborhoods for fruit trees that aren't being harvested or from homes that appear to be vacant and contact the homeowner's about harvesting for the local food banks if the homeowner's aren't intending to collect the fruit. Our community garden also has several food forests planted specifically for the food banks and shelters.

If your neighbors are also having an increase of spiders and wildlife, perhaps they have seen what type of wildlife has moved in, so you'll know what critter(s) you are dealing with in the garden. In the meantime you may just want to use hot pepper spray for your remaining plants.