We had steady but not heavy rain overnight. This morning I found a depredation in the squash patch that I've never seen in nearly three decades of homesteading and an even longer period of vegetable
gardening. Two weeks ago, I transplanted out, from 6-inch pots, the squash plants that my wife had nurtured in the
greenhouse. They'd been doing well, showing good color & growth. This morning I was walking around in our larger garden and found that three of the plants had been dug out.
The plants were left sort of complete, none of the three showed damage to the stems or leaves. In
two cases, the
root ball (which had obviously developed nicely in two weeks) was laying within an inch of the hole left by the digger. But with one of these, the root ball had come apart into two portions (one still at the top of the hole the digger made). The
third plant was also complete, but while the digger did bring it up from its position, the root ball was sitting at the top of the hole. Naturally
enough, I suppose, the leaves of this third one were showing the least wilt among the three plants.
Our corn is planted in a patch adjacent to the squash, and is undisturbed. In fact, all other plants in the whole garden appear well and undisturbed. I was unable to find any tracks in the squash patch. We don't have a dog at present. We're fenced against
deer & bears. We've had trouble with skunks, but they dig in drier areas for chafer beetle grubs and haven't disturbed any plants except for digging down through the grass growing in those areas. Raccoons also seem to have gone only for those grubs in drier areas, or to our
compost bin.
We're baffled. Any Ideas?
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