Taking Care of the Squash

First, HAPPY MOTHER'S DAY to all you Moms out there!

I have 25 meat bird chicks coming this week.  I have to set up the brooders.  Jeff was supposed to help me put some things in the attic yesterday to make room for them.  It didn't happen:

Jeff:  "I'll help you with the boxes in a little while."
Me:  "Um, OK." (I was ready right that moment.  Waiting on him, in fact.)
Jeff:  Vanishes.

He came back inside an hour or two later:
Jeff:  "Do you want me to go ahead and put the thingies around the squash?"
Me: (huh?) -- (Oh, yeah, he means the cages.)
Me: "Um, OK."
Jeff: Vanishes.

I can't blame him.  Yesterday, while too wet to work the soil, was a gorgeous day.  Cool, sunny, breezy.  He wanted to be outside, and I did too.  But I have to get the brooders ready!

Anyway, we're experimenting with a lot of things this year.  One of them is putting tomato cages around the squash:

This idea (and pic) came from the square-foot gardening folks over at Our Engineered Garden.  We have plenty of room for the plants, but the last 3 years we've lost every single one to squash bugs:

Now, there are 2 possible reasons for having the bugs in the first place:
1.  They're just here and we just have to deal with them; or
2.  They came in the purchased mulch we put around the plants.

We're not buying mulch this year, but I suspect it's #1 in which case I'm going to have to pick the little bastards off by hand and having the cages will be a disadvantage. (Squash bugs are immune to every allowable organic pesticide, and even some of the toxic ones.)

Last year Jeff and Doug built 40+ tomato cages out of 4' horse wire.  They're about 30" in diameter but we discovered that they weren't nearly big enough in height or girth.  So we're using them for the squash.  (Bad news is, the guys have to make about 100 more cages out of 5' wire, somewhere in the vicinity of 36" in diameter.  Yikes!)

Here's what our squash looks like right now.  Jeff repurposed the aluminum legs off a broken EZ-up canopy to stake the cages.  (He's awfully clever.)  He didn't cage the hills that don't have starts, but I'm betting with some warm weather they'll come up:

I haven't seen any of the bugs yet, and we're awfully late in planting this year so maybe we'll have a "light" infestation.  (pfpfpf - no such thing as a light infestation when you're talking about picking bugs off plants by hand!)

OK, gotta run. Jeff just came in and we put stuff in the attic.  Now I can set up the brooders!