Is that not a massive zucchini? Of course, the plant doesn't all the credit for its rebound; I definitely had a part in that. But I'm certainly glad to see the plant is a fighter--and will be even more glad if it keeps producing crazy big zucchini!
For those of you who are curious, my approach to combating the bugs that had infested our plants was pretty simple. Some of plants definitely looked beyond saving, so I pulled those out to give the other plants more breathing space as they worked to fight against the infestation. With the remaining plants, I started by cutting out as much of the damaged area as I could (and in the process found quite a few larvae inside the stalks--definitely the culprits, and most likely squash vine borers). Then, I sprayed the "open wounds" with a soap/water solution and packed fresh soil around the area to encourage new roots to set. That's it! We haven't cut into the zucchini to see if the soap/water solution is going to affect the taste of the fruit, but I'm not too concerned. And we've seen quite a few blossoms pop up over the past few days, which makes me believe the presence of this zucchini wasn't just a fluke incident. Now if I could just figure out how to keep these pests out of my plants in the first place life would be good (and, you know, a few inches of rain would be nice too. I'm seriously dreading our water bill this month).
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