Latest / Good Morning From The Chicken Coop! / Season 5 - Episode 114 - Lessons from the sudden collapse of my zucchini

Transcript

Season 5 - Episode 114 - Lessons from the sudden collapse of my zucchini · Good Morning From The Chicken Coop!

• 0:01
  Hey everybody, welcome to the good morning from the Chicken
• 0:04
  Coop podcast. My name is Kim Johnson and I am
• 0:07
  a mastermindset, coach, creative strategist, and also happen to
• 0:10
  be a farmer. This is my chicken coop and I
• 0:12
  come out here every day to record a podcast to teach
• 0:16
  distinctions, possibilities, new ways of thinking, and just bring
• 0:20
  some joy into the world. So welcome to the coop and let's
• 0:23
  start your day off in a fantastic way.
• 0:27
  Hey everybody, good morning. Yesterday I went out to the
• 0:31
  garden in the afternoon and I had had a few little challenges
• 0:36
  with one particular squash plant from the very beginning that was
• 0:40
  not doing so great. It just never seemed to really
• 0:43
  have vigor. It just never took off.
• 0:46
  And sometimes that happens. Like it just, you know, there's,
• 0:49
  there's a difference. Whatever it is, the seed, the
• 0:52
  genetic coding, who knows? But it's just, they're just like
• 0:55
  humans. All the plants are slightly
• 0:57
  different now. I had started in the garage, all
• 1:00
  the squash, then zucchini plants and everything was set up.
• 1:04
  They were doing fantastic except for that one.
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  It was a little weaker, but I was still like, OK, I'm going to
• 1:10
  run with it. And if you hear any noise in the
• 1:11
  background, I just want you to know you're doing some chores
• 1:13
  with me this morning because I want to get things done.
• 1:19
  And it's still pitch dark. So we are out here very early
• 1:22
  doing this and the girls are still sound asleep.
• 1:26
  In any event, back to my squash my situation.
• 1:30
  So I go out and sure enough, it starts the the.
• 1:35
  I like to refer to this as the collapse.
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  And the collapse is something that has happened before and you
• 1:42
  know, we it usually had happened with tomatoes and I didn't
• 1:45
  understand what was going on. And then I figured out that I
• 1:49
  had, I had created a situation with the tomatoes by trying to
• 1:53
  keep them like having water whenever they needed it.
• 1:57
  I was putting straw around the bottom of them to help them.
• 2:00
  And I was, I ended up creating a virus and it was so stupid when
• 2:06
  I think about it in hindsight. However, this year we have none
• 2:10
  of that because I've really taken huge precautions with it.
• 2:14
  But this thing with the squash really has never showed up.
• 2:17
  I've always had so much squash, I don't know what to do with it
• 2:19
  and I end up giving a ton of it to the chickens anyway.
• 2:23
  They love squash and I give it to them regularly.
• 2:26
  Like I'm always buying bags of squash to shred it and give it
• 2:29
  to them. So it's for me, it's this, this
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  is like an experiment. A lot of the cucumbers are the
• 2:34
  same thing. I'll give a lot of my cucumbers
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  to them. I like certain ones, but I'll
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  try different varieties, like I've got a variety.
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  Right now I don't really love it, but it's it's good for the
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  chickens and the taste of it is kind of bitter.
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  It grows really well. It's just, it doesn't have a
• 2:52
  great taste. But anyway, back to this.
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  So I go out and my literally the squash and the zucchini are like
• 2:58
  slumped over and look like I haven't watered them in eons,
• 3:01
  which is totally not true because of course I have.
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  And I'm, I'm just like, oh, here we go.
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  And it's, these plants were huge and vigorous.
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  And then they're done. And I stood there and I was
• 3:14
  like, OK, And I, I took out my, my app and I started looking to
• 3:19
  see like, OK, what could this be?
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  Where is it coming from? What is this?
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  What does this represent most of all?
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  What do I think it is? And of course, it comes back to
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  the dreaded squash vine borer. And it literally bores a hole
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  into the vine and you can't see it, it's so tiny, but it
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  interrupts the pattern of how this the the all the liquid and
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  nutrition from the soil. No matter how much I feed it,
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  it's it can't, it can't come up. So I have to make a decision
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  today. I'm going to go out there and
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  I'm going to either pull the plants to make sure that I am
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  getting rid of them. Now, I could try to cut some of
• 4:02
  the plants back, but the challenge if I cut the plant
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  back is that little borer may still be in there and it lay it.
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  And of course, where this becomes tricky is it comes from
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  a moth. So it's not coming out of the
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  soil. This is literally a moth, a
• 4:19
  Caterpillar that turns into a moth and the moth lays the eggs
• 4:23
  on the plant and they're so small and all of a sudden you
• 4:26
  don't even notice them. And then boom, here we have an
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  issue. So I'm very, very, very
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  conscientious of the fact that if they laid the if they laid
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  the eggs on the stem, I couldn't even see them.
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  And there's an old wives tale that you can put aluminum foil
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  about two inches, 4 inches. You just keep cutting back your
• 4:50
  leaves and you cut, I mean, or you cut back the leaves off the
• 4:53
  stem. So you have the nice strong stem
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  and then you can put aluminum foil around it and that will
• 4:58
  protect it. Now, why is this important and
• 5:00
  why am I telling all of you this?
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  Well, it's because at any moment you can, you can have this
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  appearance of collapse in anything in your life.
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  Everything's going along fine. You're completely strong, you're
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  producing, everything's working, and then all of a sudden, boom,
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  it happens. But the trick is to not panic.
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  The trick is to go out and make smart decisions.
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  The trick is to make a decision about how you want to
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  participate and save yourself. So I am in the process of going
• 5:31
  through this with the squash, and I've done this a lot of
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  times with myself and it just always fascinates me how nature
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  aligns. So my plan today is to go out
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  there with my glasses on with a flashlight during my break, get
• 5:48
  down underneath, look at the stems, see if I can see the
• 5:51
  telltale signs. If it's there, I'm going to
• 5:55
  eliminate the plant and I'm going to start over because it's
• 5:58
  early enough in the season and squash loves hot weather and we
• 6:02
  have plenty of that. So I'm just going to start them
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  over again and we'll have squash later in the season.
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  It's not the end of the world, just like it isn't for us.
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  So go out, see what you can do to protect yourself from a
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  collapse before it happens. Now I know that aluminum foil
• 6:20
  will be going on there no matter what, every single season, just
• 6:24
  to make sure and protect it ahead of time, right?
• 6:29
  My friends, I hope you have a blessed day and I will see you
• 6:32
  tomorrow. Bye.