Black Beauty Zucchini

Bought from Bonnie Plants: https://bonnieplants.com/product/black-beauty-zucchini/

Per website: matures in 48 days

Timeline (? days to first harvest - TBD):

- 5/26/20: Purchased - already had immature flowers

- 6/6/2020: Transferred to larger container

- 6/8/20: First male flower bloomed

- 6/13/20: First female flowers noticed

- Around 6/24/20: First female flower bloomed, squash borers decimated the plant

2021 Timeline:

- 3/13: got another starter Bonnie Plant from Lowes - this time the two seedlings were separated out and planted into a 15 gallon grow bag. Seedlings came with only the cotyledons

- 3/21: seedlings have grown first true set of leaves

- 3/28: some flower buds have started appearing at base, more leaves

I must begin this with a rant. Because everywhere I read that these were so easy to grow, and we would have bountiful amounts of zucchini, and I was dreaming of who I would be able to gift these to.

And at first, it was super promising, but alas JUST AS I POLLINATED MY FIRST FEMALE FLOWER (I feel like I waited forever for the female flowers to open) the squash borers got them :(

UGH. So we ended up with no zucchini. But I'm determined to try again next year now that I know what to look for and hopefully will be more proactive at preventing those stupid things.

So I really have nothing to say except for watch the stems closely...spray neem oil on it...separate out the darn zucchini plants because again, didn't realize there were multiple in one container. So I ended up growing two zucchini plants in one Sterilite container, and that was way too crowded and probably made the infestation worse since there wasn't enough air flow. Sigh.

And probably with the zucchini - better to plant it closer to the surface of the container so it has more air circulation.

Anyways, here's what could have been. Some of those leaves were bigger than my face. And those pretty yellow blossoms! Heard some people actually grill/bake them?

-CEC