{sigh} The amazing, struggling $64 butternut squash plant finally croaked over.
Yesterday it was looking a little yellow, the season being August. When it’s hotter than a three-dollar cookstove around here (the norm for the low-desert climate from May or June through mid-October), plants living in pots have to be watered every. single. day, no exceptions. And they need to be watered early in the morning, before the sun starts its daily baking process.
But…in August we get some humidity. This means that not all the water evaporates out of some pots, so plants that don’t like wet feet can show symptoms of overwatering. Like, for example, yellowing leaves.
So I decided to hold off watering the squash for a day, though left the shade cloth over it.
This morning—twenty-four hours later—it is stone dead. A stiff squash. A squash that has gone to meet its maker.

A couple of its viney arms were still clinging to life, having rooted in the sandy quarter-minus crushed granite that is my yard’s desert landscaping. Briefly I considered snipping those free from the dead mother plant and just continuing to water them. But really: what for? The original point of this exercise was to see whether seeds from a particularly delicious grocery-store butternut would grow in the back yard.
Welp…now we know the answer to that one!
😛