Three sisters part 5

I haven't been keeping up with my blogging on the three sisters project of late, been spending all my time hanging around the hospital. Hopefully this isn't going to turn into a medical blog.

Anyhoo, here is a picture of the three sisters today...

The corn has come on nicely, we have been eating it every night for the past few days. I am estimating we will get somewhere around 100 ears in total. The beans... We manged to harvest enough for everyone to have a couple mouthfuls. And there are some more blossoms, so we'll see.

 The pumpkins and zucchini are doing very well. Here is one of the recent zucchini harvest, with a 12 inch ruler for reference.

The zucchini bread was delicious.I also tried drying some. I sliced it into thin chips, and seasoned in a few different ways. Then ran the food dryer overnight, till they were nice and crispy. The salt was okay. The salt and pepper was marginally disgusting . The garlic salt ones were quite tasty, and the ones seasoned with chili powder were pretty good eats as well.

The pumpkin hiding below (still yellow in color). Is roughly basketball sized.

 Unfortunately, the squash bugs have made a comeback, and are starting to kill the vines.

I have circled a couple egg clusters in the picture below. (sorry the picture is a little fuzzy, I have nearly the cheapest camera I could find at the time).

 I don't want to spray again now though, while we are harvesting beans and corn. So I am hand squishing what I can. Hopefully that will be sufficient to keep the plants sufficiently alive and healthy. Anyone have any tips on squash bug control?

I have been reading a book "The New Organic Gardener" by Eliot Coleman. Not a new book by any means, but really quite informative. He does spend a little time on the typical "Organic is good, non-organic is bad" spiel you would expect from a book of that title. However, he keeps it to a minimum, he doesn't do so in a preachy way, and he backs up what he says with logical analysis, and scientific research. Most of his time is spent focusing on tips, tools, and techniques for successful, economic, and high quality gardening. It is a good read. I am looking forward to trying out some of th ideas he suggests.

One of the ides he proposes is that sufficiently healthy soil can help significantly  in the control of plant pests. I am  not sure I buy that one. I don't quite see how that will make a difference. perhaps it isn't referring to all types of pests - He does site some cases specific to certain soil pests, and I can see how it would help there. Not sure good soil will slow down the squash bugs, and the aphids. Worth a try over the next couple years though. Nothing to lose in improving my soil. But of course. If anyone has any other suggestions, particularly for those two pests, I would love to hear them.