Your Zucchini Plants Will FAIL Unless You STOP Doing This!

What's growing on, gardeners? If there is one summer crop that backyard gardeners seem to struggle with the most, it is zucchini. My zucchini plants used to be terrible until I figured out why they were dying every single year, and now they are amazing. Your zucchini plants will fail unless you stop doing these three things. On today's video, I'm going to share with you what everybody seems to be doing wrong so you have bumper crops all the way until frost. There are three types of zucchini growers. Gardener number one plants their zucchini plants in the spring, and they never seem to flower or fruit properly, and then the plants die and they get little to no harvest at all. Gardener number two plants their zucchini in the spring, and they are initially rewarded by very healthy plants that produce bumper crops of zucchini. So they go from no zucchini to so many zucchini they can't use them all. But then the plants shut off, start producing nothing, and go into decline, and they're stuck in no zucchini town again. Regardless if you're gardener number one or number two, by the time mid-summer rolls around, chances are this is what your zucchini plants look like. They are not long for this world. Then there is the elusive gardener number three. Gardener three plants their zucchini plants in early spring, has a manageable harvest all throughout late spring, into the summer, and into the fall consistently, and gets zucchini basically from mid-spring all the way until close to frost. This is the elusive gardener we all want to be, but it seems like no one ever reaches this status. But I finally cracked the code, and these are the secrets. Secret number one is to stop trying to keep your initial planting of zucchini plants alive. Zucchini plants are part of the cucurbit family of vegetables. They germinate quickly, they grow quickly, they fruit quickly, and they die quickly. Our springs, and summers, and early falls, that frost-free period, is vastly longer than the average lifespan of a single zucchini plant. Trying to keep them alive is a fruitless endeavor, and it's the cause of most of our problems. The way we should be growing zucchini plants in our garden is through succession planting, the act of regularly planting fresh plants in our garden at certain regular intervals. I recommend we plant new plants in our garden every four to six weeks, and that is because most zucchini plants are only going to survive about 60 to 90 days after transplanting, depending on your climate, and your disease, and pest pressure. And that's a tiny fraction of all of our growing seasons. So all of us need to plant multiple waves of zucchini successively in our gardens. Now, no matter where you live, I strongly recommend that first wave of zucchini that you plant out in your garden, you start the seeds indoors, because in early spring your soil is going to be too chilly for adequate zucchini germination. So we want to get them started indoors, then transplant them out when the weather is safe. Zucchini seeds like to germinate with soil temps between 75 and 85 degrees Fahrenheit, so that's what you want outdoors, and that's just not going to fly for most of us in early spring. However, for successive plantings, for wave two or three, if your soil temp is over 75 degrees Fahrenheit, you can actually direct sow your zucchini and they will germinate just fine. Now, here where I live on the southeastern coast of North Carolina, because we have severe pest and disease issues all throughout the summer, I always like to start mine indoors so I can transplant pristine seedlings out into my garden. But if your disease pressure is a little bit lower or you're not afraid of the gamble, just go ahead and save yourself a few steps and direct sow them. So for your convenience, I've put together this rough transplant schedule that will approximate how many different waves of zucchini you can successively plant in a year based on your average last frost date. If your average last frost date is in mid to late March, you can grow pretty easily four different waves of zucchini. If your last frost date is mid to late April, you can easily plant three waves. Even if you have a very short frost free period where you're not planting your stuff out until mid to late May, you can still easily grow two different waves of zucchini. And of course, if your frost date is earlier in each month, you're kind of on the border between different waves. Well, it's up to you to figure out if you want to do four or three waves, three or two waves, etc. And of course, if you have a really long growing season where your frost ends well before March, well, you can practically grow zucchini all year round, most of the year for sure. So it's up to you to figure out just how many waves you want. You can have a massively long growing season growing it this way. So here I have a transplant of an extremely productive variety of zucchini called Dunja. This is one of the most productive varieties I have ever seen. I'll quickly show you how to transplant this. First, let's start off with our fertilizers. I start with a blend of organic slow-release fertilizers. I mix myself consisting of three to four parts of organic all-purpose fertilizer, one to two parts bone meal, one part crab and lobster shell meal, and one part azomite. Then I combine them in a five-gallon bucket and shake it to mix. I use this as the foundation for fertilizing all of my plants. All these slow-release organics have to be broken down by the soil microbiome, and they will slowly feed our plants as they decompose. This is the foundation for healthy plants and healthy soil. I use this crab and lobster shell meal because it inhibits root-knot nematodes, which is a major problem where I live, and I also use azomite for organic trace minerals. If you don't have issues with root-knot nematodes, you may not need to use the crab and lobster shell meal, and the azomite trace minerals is really up to you. But no matter who you are and where you live, you should all use the organic slow-release all-purpose granules as well as bone meal for healthy plants. We are also going to use a blend of water-soluble fertilizers after planting because squash plants are very heavy feeders thanks to the rapid lifespan and benefit from these water solubles. So I'm going to start off with my favorite organic fertilizer, Alaska fish fertilizer, and I'm going to shake this up really well, and I'm going to pour about two to three tablespoons of this fertilizer into a one and a half gallon watering can. Then I'm going to follow that up with a synthesized water-soluble 20-20-20 fertilizer. This is Jack's 20-20-20 or J.R. Peters. It's the same company. So I'm going to add one and a half tablespoons of that to the watering can, and I'm going to mix that in very well. And when you combine these two things together, that will help give a rapid boost that is immediately bioavailable to these very heavy plants. It's not going to harm your soil, it's going to protect it because these plants actually suck more nutrients from the soil than they give back. They deplete the soil, so we want to protect the soil by giving them rapidly available nutrients. So I dug my planting hole to the exact depth of the root ball, so when I pop off this container, the top of the root ball is going to be level with the top of the soil. And I also planted it right along one of my buried drip line emitters. That way, when I turn the irrigation on, it will roughly target the root ball. So first, let's pull off the tag and pull off the bottom of the container. And there you'll see a perfectly developed root ball. Let's set that aside. And then I'm going to place one, two tablespoons of the organic fertilizer blend I made in the planting hole. And if you want, just for good measure, you can just dust the tops and the sides of the root ball. And because these organic fertilizers are raw materials, they're not fertilizers in their raw form. They have to break down. So they aren't going to burn your plants. That makes it safe to apply and dust directly on the root ball like that. So that's totally okay. Then once our seedling is transplanted, we are going to take about one and a half tablespoons of the fertilizer and we are going to top dress the root area of the plant. And this is again going to help slowly break down and trickle feed the plant. But in order for these organic fertilizers to break down, they need to be wet to decompose. So we're actually going to take the water-soluble fertilizers and then we are going to water in that plant. And that is going to wet all of the organics and help begin the breakdown process. Then we're going to push the mulch back on top of the plant and then replace our plant tag and then just add a little bit more fertilizer for good measure. And a watering can full of the water-solubles, you're going to be able to water anywhere from about four to six plants per gallon, depending on how large the transplants are. Secret number two is to stop treating our zucchini as a spring and summer crop. They are an even more effective fall crop in most cases. In fact, the late summer plantings of zucchini are often better than the spring plantings because we can avoid a lot of the problems that plague our summer garden. For example, one of the biggest problems that plague our zucchini plants is the squash vine borer. Well, did you know that you can largely avoid the vine borer and its pressure by later plantings of zucchini? That is because vine borer adults emerge when soil temperatures reach about 60 to 65 degrees Fahrenheit, and then they start laying eggs on our plants. So the borers, they're actually hatching in late spring, early summer, and that is when the vine borer damage tends to happen. Well, our early crops that we plant out in the spring are what gets ravaged because of the egg-laying cycle of the vine borer. But later crops will be outside of the egg-laying cycle, so they're no longer a direct threat to our plants. So late summer zucchini is not as threatened by the vine borer. In some climates, you won't have any vine borer pressure at all in late summer entering the fall. For example, most northern states only face one generation of the squash vine borer. So once those eggs hatch in late spring, early summer, they don't lay eggs again and you don't have to worry about them. So while your initial wave of zucchini will get killed, the subsequent plantings in mid-summer and late summer that go into the fall don't face laying eggs of the squash vine borer, so they don't affect them. So if you live in a northern state, those initial plantings get ravaged, but later season plantings will not. And it's a huge mistake that northern gardeners make that they don't plant that second wave. Now if you live in southern states, some southern states with very long seasons can have two generations of the squash vine borer. But again, even if your second wave still gets killed by the second generation, that third and fourth wave that plant later into late summer into early to mid-fall, well they won't be affected. So no matter where you live, that last wave or two is invulnerable to the vine borer because the egg-laying moths aren't doing that thing at the time. But the good news doesn't end there. The good news is that pretty much all insect pest pressure declines as we move into fall. So if you have other squash pests like other worms and caterpillars or the awful terrible squash bug, all of those populations are going to decline later in the season. So while insect threat populations are increasing in the spring into early summer, the opposite happens in the back half of the season. So those later waves of zucchini don't face quite the level of insect damage. So by succession planting like this, you can guarantee you always have healthy, vibrant, productive plants in your garden. And when the old plants start getting beaten up by insect pests and diseases, you can pull them out so they don't attract more insects and diseases into your garden. When you nail the timing, you'll be ripping out the old plants at the exact time the young plants are hitting their stride and starting to produce again. This is how you have wonderful zucchini production that you can manage all the way into the fall, possibly until frost. However, that being said, there are still ways that we can mitigate insect pressure in our garden and try and prevent damage from the vine borer and squash bugs while the populations exist. For example, one of my favorite things to do is to make a mixture of surround WP and spinosad. Surround WP is an organic micronized kaolin clay that, when mixed in water and applied regularly, forms a protective clay barrier around the plants, protecting them from insect harm. Spinosad is a natural bacteria that, when ingested, is fatal to worms, caterpillars, beetles, and a variety of other pests. So the insects that do try and chew through the clay barrier layer will ingest that bacteria and die. Spraying plants once a week with this mixture is highly protective. I'll link to a video both above and down in the video description that will show you how to make this mixture, as well as I'll place links to the products in the video description if you need to source them. If you're enjoying this video made by a real human that's actually growing real zucchini, would you consider subscribing to the channel, hitting the like button, and leaving a comment in the comment section? Doing those things go miles to help spread the video around the platform. YouTube's made it tough on us long format content creators this year by promoting shorts a lot more, and with all the AI garbage hitting the platform, it's been really difficult for us to find new audiences. That would be a way that you could support the channel, and I'd greatly appreciate it. Thank you so much. And secret number three is to stop planting our summer zucchini crops out in the full sun. This may fly in early spring when the days are relatively short and the sun is relatively gentle, but once the full summer sun hits with maximum UV index, it will ravage our plants in most circumstances. These plants are not a pioneer species. They are a tropical understory species that adapted to grow under the protection of forest canopies in the tropics and absorb the dappled light. So although because they are a tropical species, they can tolerate the direct sunlight of spring. Once the UV index gets too high and it becomes almost like that tropical UV index, well then they need the dappled light protection of the shade cloth. That's what you see right there, and it is one of the reasons why these zucchini plants are still alive even after 100 days. These are some of the longest lived zucchini plants I have ever grown, and part of that is because of the protection from the shade. So even if you're able to keep your initial planting of zucchini alive through the pests and diseases of late spring, early summer, the full UV index will get them, and that's why my summer garden right here looks like a shade cloth bonanza. What I'm trying to do is to emulate the understory canopies that these plants adapted to grow under. So if I were to plant three different waves of zucchini here on the southeastern coast of North Carolina where I live, this is how I would and do do it. The first planting of zucchini would go out in the early to mid spring out in full sun, and I would let that grow throughout the spring unencumbered while the UV index is not all that high. Then once June came around, I would put up the shade cloth to emulate the dappled light of a protective forest canopy, and the zucchini plants would finish off their lifespan under that protection, and they would live several weeks longer. The second wave of zucchini would go out in early summer underneath shade cloth, and they would spend their entire life underneath the protection of that shade cloth because by the time they die, well chances are the shade cloth is still going to be up. Then the third planting of zucchini would go out in late summer. They would start their life underneath the shade cloth for a couple of weeks. Then the shade cloth would come down in mid to late August, and then they would grow unencumbered in the September and October sun, which is a lot gentler. Now obviously you're going to have to modify that a little bit based on your location. Here where I live on the southeastern coast of North Carolina, my shade cloth goes up the first or second week of June, and it comes down the second or third week of August. If you live south of me, you may need to put it up a little earlier and take it down a little bit later. If you're north of me, the opposite is true. You may put it up a little later and it will come down earlier, but that's up to you to figure out. That's why we write these dates down in our journals, and it takes us a few years before we find that perfect sweet spot, but we will get there with persistence and experimentation. I didn't figure this out in one year. It's taken me about eight years to figure all this out. If I had to give you some general shade cloth guidelines, northern and high elevation locations would put up shade cloth throughout the month of July. The south and the midwest, roughly June 15th through August 15th, that's me. The extreme south and Florida, Texas, the Arizona, desert, California, maybe mid-May through mid-September. But again, these are general guidelines. You're going to have to kind of figure them out for yourself, but this should give you a good starting point. And of course, if you want to learn how to install shade cloth, I'll link to a video both above and down in the video description that will show you how cheaply and easily and quickly. It's really not a big deal. And that right there are the three big secrets I had to learn that took my zucchini production from terrible to awesome all the way until frost. If you implement these tips, well, your zucchini production is going to go off the charts. But that being said, I do want to leave you with just a few more zucchini growing tips. The first little tip is to maintain a fertilizing schedule every two weeks. Remember, zucchini plants live fast and die hard, and they're super productive while they're in their prime, and they demand a ton from our soil without giving back anything in the process. They just rob our soil of nutrients. So it's very important that we constantly fertilize them, and we're going to do that in the same two-step process. We're going to apply the slow-release granular organics, about one to two tablespoons in a ring around each plant. Then we will water them in with the water-soluble fertilizers. We're going to do that twice a month, and that is going to keep them healthy and productive for their duration. The second tip is to install drip irrigation. This will make your life so much easier, and you will save a ton of money on your water bill because drip irrigation is so much more efficient. It only takes about 15 minutes to install drip irrigation per garden bed, and you will be rewarded by hours of time savings throughout the season. Plus, your plants will be happier, healthier, and more productive from the deep watering drip irrigation provides. I'll place a link both above and down in the video description that will show you how to install drip irrigation. You can do it in minutes. It's so much easier than it appears. It's even a little bit of fun, like putting together a Lego set. Finally, I want to show you a trick that seems to have legitimately chased a lot of the insect pests away from the zucchini plants in my garden. You see, the primary ways that insect pests find our plants is through sight and smell. Smell being the most important because it's what draws the insect populations into our yard and gardens from far away. Well, when I harvested my onions and garlic about a month ago, I chopped up all of the greens into pieces and I saved them as mulch for my zucchini plants. My goal was to see if I could use the stinky mulch to mask the scent of the plants so things like squash bugs and vine bores wouldn't be able to locate them. And this seems to have worked brilliantly because I've never had my zucchini plants live this long. I transplanted these zucchini plants into my garden back in early April. It is now mid-July, so when you factor in the germination time of the seedlings, these plants are over four months old. I can barely get them to three months under most years, and this is absolutely incredible where I live. Truly amazing. Compare those plants to the same zucchini planted up against my fence at the exact same time without the stinky onion and garlic mulch. This is how my first wave of zucchini always looks by now, ravaged by pests. And I think there's really something to this trick. Sure, the other one was planted out in full sun so it was a little bit more stressed out, but that can't be the only explanation because the difference is just too vast. So I will be using the onion and garlic greens as mulch for my very pest-vulnerable plants from here on out. It seems to have done the trick. And those are the three big changes that I made that took my zucchini growing game to a whole nother level. We need to stop looking at them as indeterminate producers that grow for the entire season. They do not. They are more like determinate producers that need to be planted out successively throughout the season. And we need to give them dappled light in the peak UV season because, again, they're a glorified tropical understory weed that we've bred over centuries to produce large fruits. So they need that protection from the scalding hot sun. And finally, we need to stop looking at them only as a spring and summer crop. They are just as valid, if not more valid, for a late summer into fall crop because they can avoid a lot of the pest issues that plague our garden and can avoid the entire generations of vine borers. And wouldn't that be amazing? Once you do those things and you give them proper irrigation and fertilizing, you will start seeing success all throughout the season. So everybody, I sure hope you found this video helpful. If you did, please make sure to hit the like button, subscribe to the channel, and please ring the notification bell so you're notified when I release more videos like these. I place direct links down in the video description to all of the things I use most often in my garden to grow zucchini, like the different types of fertilizers, shade cloth attachments, and things like that. For everything else I use in real life in my yard and garden, that is all linked in my Amazon storefront in the video description. While you're down there, check out my website themillennialgardener.com for all things gardening and custom home design merch if you want to support my channel. Thank you all so much for watching and I hope to see all of you again on the next video. Well, the rain is over and we have some beautiful overcast skies, so it's not too terribly hot right now. So this is the perfect opportunity to release the beast. Here he comes! Does Pupperillo want to go for a walk? Yeah, you can't even keep him in the frame. He's going to do his thing where he starts spinning around in circles. All right, buddy. Oh, he hit his button! I think he made his intentions clear. Let's go before the sun comes back out and it gets too hot. Dale, you have to come here. I can't suit you up if you're not in the room.