The Tagic Tale of a Warty Squash

You'd think Hawaii would be a great place to grow flowers and vegetables since it's warm all year round. Jarrod was super excited to plant some veggies when we got here and he bought some pots, soil and seed packets in December. Three months later, I'm thinking Jarrod might wish we had never made that fateful trip to Home Depot, because it's just been one problem after another for him. He chose tomatoes, yellow squash and zucchini. The tomatoes had sprouted and were doing great until... they got eaten by birds! They scarfed down plants, as well as the squash spouts, and Jarrod was devastated. So he erected an elaborate labyrinth of string and stakes to keep the birds out, as seen in the first picture.

That worked great -- no more bird attacks -- but then the bazillion ants we have living out back decided the plants would make a perfect habitat. We tried a few home remedies before finally forking over $7 for a bottle of veggie-safe insecticide. That made mediocre progress in curbing the ant problem, but then huge holes started appearing the leaves. Inchworm/caterpillar critters had staged an invasion! They munched holes in all the tomatoes and Jarrod ruthlessly fed live inchworms to the hordes of vicious ants! (I told him that was exceedingly cruel and made him squish the inchworms first.)

Finally, this week we were able to pick off our first completed vegetable, a decent-sized yellow squash. But it's shiny and covered in warts and resembles a decorative fall gourd. Is it edible? We'll find out soon! If it were me, I'd probably throw in the towel and resign myself to buying all our veggies from the grocery store (but I have a black thumb anyway and could never grow veggies to begin with ) but knowing Jarrod, he won't give up until he's raised a crop of perfect, prize-winning tomatoes, squash and zucchini.