summer squash

I cut off my zucchini’s big leaves in August just to expose the fruit: two weeks later, I understood what the sun had done to the skin

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I cut off my zucchini's big leaves in August just to expose the fruit: two weeks later, I understood what the sun had done...

In pursuit of faster growth, I removed my zucchini’s protective canopy of leaves. Two weeks later, every exposed fruit bore bleached, sunken patches—a painful lesson in photooxidative sunscald. What gardeners really need to know about protecting summer squash from the sun.