The Zucchini Saga... really? Not again!

I was going to happily report that I have conquered the powdery mildew on my zukes.  I have been spraying them with the baking soda/dishsoap/oil/ water concoction for a little more than a week now, and they are doing great.  No more hacking away at beautiful leaves for this girl!!!! 

BUT - - the zuke saga has decided to continue in a different fashion.  Now we have blossom end rot.  Nice.  Thanks for that.  The first little zuke died on the vine and I thought, "That's weird" - - but when the second one did it too, I knew.  They never got more than about 3" long and the thickness of my index finger, and then the end with the blossom just started to wither and brown. 

Photo courtesy: pender.ces.ncsu.edu

I wanted to scream!!!  The photo above is not zukes, I know...  but you can see the one at the bottom clearly has blossom end rot.  This is what happened to my baby zukes. 

So back to the internet I go, looking for solutions.  Here's what I found out. 

Causes of blossom end rot:

#1:  Calcium deficiency.  Add organic matter to the soil. 

#2:  Too much water and alternately

#3:  Too little water. 

WAIT!  WHAT?!

This is what I know.  My zukes are in pots that are too small.  So as a result, I have to water them too often to keep them wet... as a result they get too much water and probably too little water.  So, I'm going to go off to home depot and get a bigger pot, which I am going to add some organic matter and vermiculite to the soil, and probably some lime to add the calcium it needs.  Then I'm going to carefully remove the bottom of the pot that the zuke is currently in, to free up the roots, and sink it into the new pot so that it can reap the benefits of a larger home.  THEN - - I'm going to cover the top of the two pots together with some mulch and I'm going to make a note for myself next year that ZUKES NEED BIGGER POTS!!! 

Wish me luck.
Green thumb out.