While checking the progress of my winter crop yesterday morning, I watched as a breeze caused the leading end of a Pink Banana Squash to brush against the netting of a neighboring raised bed. The one-inch-square pattern of the netting forms a perfect lattice for the grasping tendrils of a squash vine to latch onto and follow.
Returning later in the day I found that the squash had failed to secure itself; the tendrils curved slightly at the ends but caught on nothing. The squash bumped ineffectually in the wind. I grasped the thread-thin tendrils and hooked each to the netting. They held, tenuously. I noticed a Butternut vine having the same trouble with our chain-link fence, so I affixed some tendrils there, too, then left the squash to figure the rest out themselves (my work showing the plants the right way to grow finished for the time being).
I returned to the garden late in the afternoon, expecting to see that the squash had capitalized on my aid by twisting and wrapping until tightly fastened. However, the vines continued to bob, the tendrils I’d touched blackened and shriveled. Perhaps I’d handled them too roughly, or transferred to them some oil in my hands that the delicate wisps found caustic.
Whatever the case, by the next morning the vines had found their own way, tendrils held fast by a thousand twirls around. Clearly the plants know how to apply their own hard-earned adaptations and need no pointers from me.
I like that. A lot.