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A Sower Went Out to Sow a Squash

A Sower Went Out to Sow a Squash

Last updated on: July 13, 2026 at 8:51 pm by Mary Pezzulo

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A Sower Went Out to Sow a Squash 2026-07-13T20:51:26-04:00 Mary Pezzulo

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a healthy zucchini squash with a blossom and a leaf, very unlike my ruined zucchini

image via pixabay

After the heat wave and then the rain, the garden was a mess.

The tomatoes were coming along, though they needed to be pruned. The lettuce was better than I expected this late in the year, because I planted it in shade. That watermelon vine I planted was doing the exact opposite of what it was supposed to do, as usual. I have never successfully grown a watermelon, because watermelons are ornery. I have never even once had a watermelon vine grow into the empty gap in the garden bed where the fruit can get the sun it needs to ripen. They always go the opposite way, and get lost among the corn or the sunflowers. Pumpkins are the same. My pumpkin vines were growing back where I didn’t want them, lost among the sunflower stalks. One of them had even sent a vine, with a tiny baby pumpkin on it, out over the lowest arm of a branching sunflower. And as for the zucchini, they were in crisis. The leaves were drooping, riddled with holes. They had been fine two weeks ago. Now they were nearly dead.

A sower went out to sow his seed, which was a mistake. The fastest way to ruin a seed is to throw it on the ground. A seed kept carefully in the packet will stay intact for years, but a seed thrown on the ground is spoiled. Give it some water and time, the seed coat starts to break open, and the cotyledon is exposed. The radicle starts protruding, making a root, and then the plumule at the tip of the epicotyl becomes a leaf. Then your seed is gone forever, and you’ve got a plant. Plants are not clever, and they don’t follow instructions. To sow a seed is to make a mess.

I looked closer at the zucchini. Sure enough, there were the invaders: an army of squash beetle nymphs, flowing all over the plant.

A squash beetle is an insect that doesn’t begin its life as a larva. First it looks, not exactly like a tiny spider, but like a child’s drawing of a tiny spider. Then it looks like a melon seed with legs. Finally, as an adult, it looks rather like a stink bug, and lays eggs that cling to what’s left of your squash plant. When the eggs hatch, the plant is engulfed and eaten. There were squash beetles in every stage of life gorging themselves on my zucchini bushes, and starting in on my crookneck squash as well.

I grabbed and crushed the few beetles I could catch with my hands. That was the most disgusting task, because every beetle was full of half-digested squash leaves, and smelled like it. I cannot stand squash beetles. I would rather unclog a stuck toilet or attend a Charismatic praise and worship session than crush squash beetles. Still, Jimmy’s boy and Adrienne were excited for my chocolate zucchini muffins and my savory zucchini bread with cheese. I had to save the crops.

The next twenty minutes were spent filling the lemonade pitcher with water and the tear free baby shampoo I keep for just such an emergency. I ran back and forth to the garden, pouring sudsy water over the squash plants, trying to coat each leaf. Then I got on my hands and knees and scraped the beetle eggs off the bottoms of the leaves into what was left of the soapy water. Soap creates a film that drowns a nymph or an adult bug, and stops the egg from hatching as well. I went inside to let the plants dry out again, feeling a bit like a serial killer.

A sower went out to sow his seed, which was murderous. Sowing means that some of your seeds will germinate and turn into plants. Plants are mortal, and vulnerable. They can’t run away if they’re in danger. When you sow a seed, you are helping to make a thing that can die a terrible death. Plants are all full of hope, and give hope to others, and that hope can be dashed. Crops can fail. People who were looking forward to your produce can go hungry. A thousand things can go miserably wrong, and it will be all your fault, because you had the bad sense to sow a seed. If not for you, none of this would have happened.

When I came out to survey the results, I saw that one zucchini bush was behaving curiously. Several of the leaves had drooped over. That wasn’t the result of a squash beetle.

Peering closely at the central stem of the plant, I found an open wound and an ominous spot of “frass:” sawdust from the chewed up stem. There was a maggot living in the stalk of the plant. This was not the result of squash beetles. This was a squash BORER, a parasite, a cancer on the face of the earth. A vine borer is a species of moth which lays eggs along the lowest stem of your squash plants. If you don’t catch those eggs in time, they hatch into ugly larvae that burrow into the stems and kill the plant from the inside. They only spawn one generation per year, that hatch at a predictable time– in late June, in this climate. If you can defeat them before they hatch, you’ve won. If they’re already in your vines, there’s a chance you can save the plant by carefully cutting them out with a knife. I tried that. I pulled out the ugly creature and threw it away. But of course, I couldn’t do it carefully enough. That night, the whole bush died.

If I left the dead plant where it was, the parasite would continue eating its way out, and become a moth, and infest the garden next year. And I knew it wasn’t alone: squash vine borers never lay just one egg. They lay dozens.

The only thing to do was to quarantine the plague.

Grimly, I got a garbage bag. I searched the garden and tore up every single squash that had signs of borer damage. All the pumpkin plants had drooping vines from the bugs. The first bush was gone entirely, but another wasn’t far behind. I ripped them all out of the ground, bagged them along with their half-developed fruit, and threw them away. There will be no home grown pumpkin crop this year, and I’ve only got one wizened zucchini left.

I drove all over town looking for any potted zucchini seedlings that hadn’t been bought so late in the season. There were none. One hardware store had a few crookneck squash. You can make zucchini bread out of crookneck squash. I bought them, and planted them. Every plant got a soapy water bath before I went in for the night.

The next morning, there was no sign of the borers. A few of the plants had more beetles, so I crushed them and soaped the leaves again. Another day, and there were blossoms again. I just might get some food for my trouble.

To sow a seed is to sow chaos, but there’s always a chance that it’s worth it.

A sower went out to sow his seed. And as he sowed, some seed fell on the path, and birds came and ate it up. Some fell on rocky ground, where it had little soil. It sprang up at once because the soil was not deep, and when the sun rose it was scorched, and it withered for lack of roots. Some seed fell among thorns, and the thorns grew up and choked it. Some seed fell on rich soil, where it grew into healthy looking plants. Some of those plants were devoured by bugs, and some were devoured by borers, and the borers went on to infect the plants next to them until nobody could say ‘this is the garden’ without talking about the infestation. Nobody could think about the existence of the garden, without thinking of the labor and disappointment that a garden can bring. Everyone who saw that garden was horrified at the sower because of the chaos he unleashed, and they were not wrong. Many came to believe that the garden was nothing but a nest of bugs, and they had a point. Many came to believe that the sower had never existed, and the possibility of gathering food from a garden was a foolish lie. But some of those plants survived to bear fruit, and some of that fruit was good to eat, and all who ate lived. As for the sower, he went on sowing, because sowing is what seeds are for. There is always the chance that your garden could feed a hungry soul.

Whoever has ears, let him hear.

Mary Pezzulo is the author of Meditations on the Way of the Cross, The Sorrows an d Joys of Mary, and Stumbling into Grace: How We Meet God in Tiny Works of Mercy.

Steel Magnificat operates almost entirely on tips. To tip the author, donate to “The Little Portion” on paypal or Mary Pezzulo on venmo

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