The Costata Romenesco Squash

As with most people, I like a little bit of summer squash, or zucchini, now and then. However, I don’t like to overdo it. For years I have heard that Costata Romenesco is the most delicious varieties of squash to grow, so I decided to try it.

Though the seed source for this variety provided sub-par seeds, I enjoyed growing out this variety. The squash were enjoyable to eat in a number of dishes and tasted fairly good when raw. When I stopped ot look at the Costata Romenesco plant/bush, I enjoyed watching the bees come and go from the plant. Some native bees even took to hanging around in the flowers.

 

 

The taste of this variety is pretty good, the ridging is interesting and the texture of the Costata Romenesco is pretty consistent. I’m not sure if I would say it is the “best” zucchini that I have ever tasted. This goes to the Long of Naples – a Cucurbita moschata variety (like butternut) that often produces 25-50 pound fruit when mature. When harvested at a mere 15 pounds, the texture of the fruit is so smooth and tender that it is a true joy to consume.

 

Out of 10, I would say that the Costata Romenesco ranks somewhere around a 7. It is not quite as productive as some other varieties, but has some pretty good qualities that make it a summer squash worth growing.

 

Serenade – Reversing the effects of Rot & Disease

So – in several other posts I have brought up the incredible benefits I have seen this last year by spraying some Serenade (Bacillus subtilis strain QST 713) on my plants. Though it is not a miracle cure for every plant problem that a gardener will encounter, Serenade did a fantastic job of helping my garden to thrive.

 

First of all, let me say that Serenade is no longer in production. Bayer purchased the company that made this product and has been distributing it on an extremely limited basis by a trade name that includes many other chemical pesticides, herbicides and fungicides. So trusting in Bayer to continue producing this product may not be a gardener’s best bet.

The exact same product, in larger quantities (starting at 1 gallon) and at a higher price is available by the name of CEASE by BioWorks. The main retail website to purchase this product is through Arbico Organics, who pays me nothing to say any of this.

So – what are the benefits of Bacillus subtilis strain QST 713? Especially before the fruiting stage of plant growth, this bacteria helps both the leaves and roots of the plant to flourish. Exactly how they promote healthy plant growth is unknown to myself, through I believe that they must, in some way, outcompete other “bad” bacteria to provide the plant with greater access to nutrient and more efficient use of sunlight than the plant would otherwise be able to experience. I don’t believe that there is a direct impact on the leaf, like is the case with many fungicides. Instead, the plant is provided the ability and opportunity to heal itself.

What are my experiences with this product? Increased growth in my cucumbers and tomatoes. Healing my cucumber, tomato and banana plants from environmental, bacterial and fungus conditions that would otherwise have killed the plants. What more can I say? Like I said, it is no miracle product, but – when applied every other week – it can make a huge difference in ensuring that plants continue to grow in a steady productive manner until the crop has matured.

Finally, I will try to make sure to link you to both the video I made along with the webpages where you can find this product.

The Taxi Tomatoes that produced multiple harvests

Over the last several years I have grown the Taxi tomato. The majority of the time I have grown it, I have had some form of success. The very first year I had my garden, I grew a whole lot of them. The following year or two I grew less of them outside of the garden. But last year, I decided I would grow primarily Taxi tomatoes in the area in which I had been growing my sweet potatoes.

Tomatoes generally don’t do well being grown in the same place year after year. The plants often draw a large amount of fertility, nutrients and other good things from the soil. Additionally, fungus, bacteria, viruses and other disease issues that can build up in the plants can sometimes make their way into the roots and the soil. 

 

In 2019, my children splashed chlorinated water over the sides of the pool, which killed the healthy bacteria that supported the roots of the plants, which quickly led to their demise. Likewise, at the beginning of the 2020 gardening season highly chlorinated water was splashed all over my Taxi tomato plants, which quickly began to decline. I decided to experiment by spraying some Serenade (Bacillus subtilis strain QST 713) onto the plants. Within a matter of days, the plants not only rebounded from the injury caused by the chlorine, but were doing much better than they were doing prior to having the bacteria stripped from the soil. So – this is how I had a good crop of Taxi tomatoes. Every 2-3 weeks, the plants would decline enough to require spraying again and each time I sprayed, the plants did better. Spraying like this turned this determinate tomato variety into something that was much more semi-determinate in nature.

 

The vines continued to grow strong through several flushes of tomatoes until the plants, though still free of disease, looked used up enough that I decided to pull them. This is always a hard decision to make: when to pull the plant? My decision point for pulling a plant is when the plant begins to decline to the point at which leaving it in the soil would be detrimental to the health of the garden. For me, tomatoes usually reach this point immediately after their first fruit is formed (one of the many reasons I prefer growing determinate tomatoes). Most years I would have pulled the plant much earlier, but this year I decided to pull it later because the plant’s health was still so good. 

 

So altogether this was a fantastic year for growing out the Taxi tomato. I enjoyed a good harvest - and the plants were healthy enough that the negative effects of their presence in that spot were mostly mitigated by the bacterial fungicide I used to maintain them. Unlike previous years, I can gladly say that – at least in relation to growing out my Taxi Tomatoes – that I wouldn’t change a thing.