The Cucumber Beetle is a bastard. Yeah, I said it. Dirty bugging bastards. I understand, they are a form of life here on earth… trying to make their way, multiply and get on like the rest of us creatures…. I respect the hustle to survive. But as a human trying to grow Cucuzza in my garden, they have become the enemy. They are the problem in the way of my plan to grow food and nourishment. I wish I could just talk it out with them and be like, Hey! Yo! Guys… Beetles… We call you Beetles, we named you Beetles... I’m talking to you…. Can I plant something else for you? What else can you eat? Is there anything I can do to work this out, because you’re fucking up my summer gardening hobby and it’s frustrating me.” I’d love to be diplomatic about this… but I don’t speak bug and they certainly don’t have my kind of ears to listen to.
What we tried:
• Captain Jack’s Dead Bug Brew (for organic gardening) … didn’t work.
• Yellow sticky traps. Worked to grab a few. But they also caught bees and a bunch of flies and it got gross. Even messed up and perhaps killed a baby bird. Which was horrible… It doesn’t work to catch all the beetles. And plus, I read that since yellow attracts them it might even attract more beetles! Who knows… Not I.
• Garlic Water Concoction. That’s water, previously boiled with garlic and oil. This was a recco from an old Italian man at the local grocery store who passionately believed this was his saving grace. He’s “botsu” it didn’t work and whack them all.
The plan for next year is to move the garden. Somewhere on the internet, we learned they lay eggs and come up from the ground. So by moving the garden and pulverizing the ground with bug killer treatment we can try to eliminate them before they hatch. And maybe this will trick them a bit in being able to find the garden in the other corner of the backyard. We shall see.
Why can’t our summer cucuzza garden coexist with these bugs? The devastation from the Cucumber Beetles is twofold. One, they eat the pollen in the male flowers. And two, they spread disease or bacterial wilt that destroys and ultimately kills the plant. From what we noticed, the cucuzza leaves start turning brown, yellow and wilting. Male flowers become less common. The females shrivel and wilt. Some females will even start to take after pollination but then wilt away. They get this sort of saggy twisted and decrepit look and eventually brown up and die away. Even the big healthy ones… we wondered are they ok to eat? Sometimes the color looked a little light… not sure if on a molecular level it changes anything or turns it harmful to consume, but everything seemed to taste quite normal. So on that level, we figured it’s good enough.
All in all, we got some good Cucuzza out of the garden — but it was a battle
I hope next year we are able to have a better season. My aim will be to capture and share recipes and the various types of dishes you can serve up using the Cucuzza. We tried a myriad of things, Pasta with Tenerumi, oven-baked Cucuzza, sauteed with pasta with Cucuzza, and Cuzoodles (Cucuzza noodles — so fun to eat and fun to say) and we’re also planning to start stuffing them sort of like the Lebanese Kussa squash.
Happy Cucuzza gardening and death to Cucumber Beetles. :)