The past several years zucchini season has been something to celebrate. If we’re going to have blistering hot weather, at least there’s a green reward when you drag the hose to the raised bed.

I thought it wasn’t going to happen for me this year. My sister and I will be trekking through Costa Rica in July, and most of the early zucchini shriveled after reaching only the size of my finger.

The more I researched, the more I realized my squash problem could be one of many things: Lack of good pollination, not enough water in the raised bed, lime deficiency, bad luck.

I pollinated by hand, soaked the raised bed and added lime, so now I’ll never know what helped two zucchinis grow to full size.

The lime, by the way, was ill-timed. The only reason I bought the bag of lime was that it was really hot and I found myself wandering slowly through the garden section of a big-box store. I’m a big fan of using other people’s air-conditioning when it’s 109 degrees.

I bought a bag of lime packaged for hydrangeas. The plant-food marketers noted that the granules are helpful for turning hydrangea flowers pink. It wasn’t until after I added heaping spoonfuls of lime to the soil in my raised bed that I learned it can take months for lime to be useful to plants, and I should have added the stuff in the fall.

As with most things having to do with garden chemistry, it’s best to have the soil tested so you’re not spending $4 on another bag of junk that will sit in the shed until 2029.

Send me a note if you have had your soil tested. I’ll write about that before 2029.

ZUCCHINI MEMORIES

Last year the zucchini harvest was fast and furious. I ate one elongated, green fruit each day for at least two weeks and even had a few extras to dump on the neighbor’s front door.

However, after this heat wave, I’m less hopeful. Human motivation slows to a crawl when walking outside feels like being zapped by a heat death-ray. Plants react similarly.

A rather scholarly article from the University of Delaware, http://tinyurl.com/y8fz5638, describes how plants make it through the heat through transpiration. Water vapor is released from pores at on the underside of the leaves and makes life just a little more bearable or the plant. If the plant runs out of water, this process stops. The best thing we can do is mulch, mulch, mulch. The problem is, humans are inside by the air conditioning at exactly the same time our plants need us most.

Other tricks for hot-weather include providing temporary shade, especially to block out the afternoon sun from the west.

Rather than lament more hot weather problems, I’m going to be grateful that I received the gift of two beautiful zucchinis before heading to near the equator. If that’s all that arrive, I know there are more than a few farmers markets in town, and I trust those growers to shade, mulch and water with more know-how than I possess.

MIGHTY ZUCCHINI

While we’re waiting indoors to see how well our plants survive, we might as well remember why zucchini are such an awesome food. The SELF Nutrition Data website, http://tinyurl.com/y86ojgou, notes that one cup of zucchini contains 40 percent of daily Vitamin A needs and 9 percent of that elusive Vitamin K. If you’re looking for magnesium, manganese or potassium, this fruit has your numbers. Also, with under 30 calories per cup, you can fill up on zucchini for lunch and have a grumbling stomach by midafternoon. By the time you head to Shubert’s for a well-deserved summer treat, you won’t feel any guilt for the warm-weather indulgence.

Garden enthusiast Heather Hacking can be contacted at sowtheregardencolumn@gmail.com. Many of her archived articles, some of them informative, can be found here: www.norcalblogs.com/sowthere.

Heather Hacking — Enterprise-Record

Last Thanksgiving, my friend Kara and I drove north from my aunt’s house in the Bay Area. The drive was at night, about three weeks after my Handsome Woodsman died in a car crash.

A lot has happened since then, but that day I was putting one foot in front of the other.

I knew when I walked in the door to my home, I would find only the broken pieces.

“It must be weird,” Kara said, her face barely visible in the intermittent glow of headlights along Highway 99.

“You’re going to have a lot of changes.”

Kara has a comforting way of saying a lot with just a few words, then leaving room for me to fill the quiet.

Dave had just died. She knew I had been taking classes to someday become a teacher.

“You won’t be working at the newspaper anymore,” she said as we continued through the dark countryside.

“Everything is going to change,” I said.

That moment is still vivid — the cool of the car windows, the smell of farm land, feeling like a tourist in familiar surroundings, trust that whatever came next was in God’s hands.

Here we are six months later and change is here.

June 10 is my last day at the office where I have worked for more than half my life.

I’m thankful I will continue to write this Friday column, which lets me play with words and focus on things that bring me the most joy.

In August I’ll start the year-long teaching credential program at Chico State University and transform into “Miss Hacking,” an elementary school teacher. I don’t know whether I’ll squeeze the rubber chicken into the curriculum, but I’m confident there will be a place on the classroom windowsill for a few seedlings.

So many words should be said about my kind, hard-working coworkers, who have been my newspaper family for 25 years. I’ll also miss feeling close to my community, telling people’s stories. There is not enough ink in the pressroom to explain how strange it feels to be leaving the center of the newsroom.

Yet, this new path feels right. I’ll share stories in a new way to a much younger audience.

When I think back to that night in the car with Kara, today seemed so far away. The only certainty I had then, and the only certainty I have now, is that everything is going to change.

A CHANGE TO BUG SEASON

Sunday my friend Anina sent a text to say she was on her way to pick me up for an adventure. When I heard her car, I was standing over some faded plants, rolling my hands back and forth like I was molding clay.

“Decided to pull some weeds, eh?” she asked as I plunked into the passenger seat.

“No,” I said. “I was smashing bugs. Didn’t you hear me growling?”

You’ve all heard of “hand-picking” bugs from plants. I don’t know how others perform this task. Maybe they use chopsticks to gingerly deliver cabbage worms to a tall champagne glass filled with soapy designer dish soap.

I only had a few minutes before my ride arrived, and what I saw required primal mode. I would have needed my old-lady magnifying glasses to estimate the number of gray, gluttonous baby bugs on each stalk of kale.

Some garden books suggest using a high pressure hose to whisk those critters away.

Whisk them where? Into the nearby squash plants? Why give the critters a free waterslide to the next feast?

So much more efficient to grab handfuls of bug colonies and them into death like an Italian grandmother making ziti for her 14 cousins. I did not pause to think about how much bug guts became mixed in with green plant goo. I used that high pressure hose to zap my hands to avoid staining the interior of Anina’s car.

With the frenzy of it all, several of those plants were uprooted, which means the end of the cool season garden has officially arrived. The thing about bugs is that they seem to get to their most critical mass right about the time the plant is on its way out. It’s nature’s way of telling you to head to the Wednesday morning farmer’s market and buy hot peppers at the GrubGrown plant cart.

Send email to: sowtheregardencolumn@gmail.com.