If you hadn't heard, zucchini plants are tryhards that make way too much fruit when they're happy. I planted one zucchini and one patty pan squash (basically UFO shaped zucchinis) last year and my two-person household could not eat fast enough to keep up with them.
Transcript
Talita leaves the recycling plant through the personnel exit and enters the habitat dome, heaving a sigh of relief. Suddenly, a human hand reaches from off-panel to tug on her baggy pants, startling her.
Talita: a
It's Gillie, who had apparently been waiting for her. She presses her finger to her lips to indicate Talita should stay quiet. The two walk briskly towards the human apartments, passing Rasheed, who is at the edge of the human agricultural sector talking to Tod. Rasheed is still working on harvesting from the hydroponic zucchini bed, and beside him is a large cart filled with zucchini fruit, one of which he's handing to Tod.
Rasheed: We overplanted it. Take at least ten.
Tod: Eesh…
Rasheed: Eat it now or you’ll be having it freeze-dried.
64 thoughts on “Runaway to the Stars: Page 112”
Gleditsia
Oh hey that’s Rasheed from plant ag! He first showed up in one of the reader questions for Gillie.
everentropy
Wait, Talita can’t eat zucchini right? Why does SHE need to sneak around?
Dog
Probably because she’s doing something illegal
Spatz
oh! I understand the vision that, yes!, zuccini will be brought to space and THEY WILL GROW. Last summer I only had two plants and I got so desperate over the amount of zuccini that I threw them over the fence to my neighbour. Of course zuccini will grow in space, one can never escape zuccini.
Peter Jensen
Ah, I see, so it’s more like “National Sneak Some Freeze Dried Zucchini Into Your Neighbor’s Pantry Day”. Honestly, I could see this being a useful shelf-stable ingredient for soups and stews. And being mostly water, they’ll desiccate to a very manageable storage size. Most of my mushroom foraging ends up dried for later use over the year, since it’s also very seasonally abundant.
Microw
the saddest thing is despite zucchini’s tendency to make So Much Zucchini the past few years have unfortunately been not as great for zucchini output for us, hoping this comic will manifest too much zucchini for 2025 gardening and maybe the squash bugs will also Go Away politely
ObeyTheSnarf
For anyone who doesn’t know: for Deaf people, one of the appropriate / polite ways to get someone’s attention is to physically touch them. Talita is too tall for the traditional shoulder tap, and touching the leg or leg shoulder of someone approximately horse shaped is a good way to get kicked reflexively. A little yank on the sleeve from a distance is a reasonable compromise.
Stomping is also an option, but hearing people are more likely to take that as an act of aggression.
Disclaimer: I’m not Deaf, I just took some ASL classes. But this should be accurate, to the best of my knowledge!
Jordan Aster
She’s a person. I don’t think her first instinct would be to react like a horse and kick. Everything else checks out, though if she’s not facing away, there’s a specific way to gesture “hey” in ASL to get someone’s attention as well.
Rabbit
Where I lived in high school, it wasn’t a question of whether the neighbors would sneak zucchini onto your porch in late summer, it was only a question of how much. Ten isn’t so bad when you think about it…
bitty
i just wanted to say that the gardener REALLY looks like my partner and he agrees. he also used to be a landscaper/gardener so this situation even suits him. my surprise when i saw the last page was huge, it looked like you had drawn from a picture reference of him harvesting veggiesf!!!
Gar G
I love the way you drew the sigh
Potatoe
Happy new year!!
Athelind Llewellyn Long
Everybody in the comments is talking about zucchini and nobody is talking about Talita’s delightful culottes or the lovely detail of the tails of the SIGH balloon pointing at her excurrent nostrils/spiracles!
Ruby
Have a zucchini-ful new year, everyone!
the Inmara
Yay! The Zucchini Joke lives on!
Daedalus
Patty pans are the best, full stop.
Emma H
“The optimal number of zucchni plants is 1/2.” — Teresa Nielsen Hayden
Montydragon
overgrown zucchini my beloved…. Gosh, Talita looks so cute in that last panel.
Martin
AVIAN HOMEPLANET “PLANTS” MOMENT!!!!!!!
Also courgette………..
Tumorhead
since we’re talking about zucchini I gotta recommend my MVP the 8 Ball variety. bush variety that makes round fruits- which gives th em a smaller seed zone and an extremely convenient shape, perfect for sandwich-sized slices or stuffing. the plants look wimpy but they just keep going and going
Thylacereal
Ah, pattypan squash, one of my favourite things to call my cat…… (whether she is being patted, eating pate, or getting squashed)
Also love the difference in size of Talita’s SIGH and ‘a’ lol
Trees
Oh my gosh, everyone on this space rock has absolutely got to stop sneaking up on Talita. Gonna’ give her a complex, is what!
I know Talita isn’t a confrontational person by nature but if she kicked just one person’s head off everyone else would hopefully get the message.
Chiyana
My lifelong friend saved someone’s kid from getting hit by a car and in return made them take a grocery bag full of zucchini they’d grown.
Every time I tell this story to people who’ve grown zucchini they’ve gone “yeah that’s understandable”
Greenjoe
OMG the little Gillie sitting on the wall on the 1st panel
evileeyore
What!?!?!
/checks
I missed that! Thanks for pointing it out, that’s so cute!
Loone
This one hits, we had a constant stream of courgettes from three plants this year for months. I don’t think there was a day I walked into the kitchen without seeing another courgette-based dish with a few odd courgettes on the floor awaiting their turn. Sadly not as productive for most of the other plants though, it was a very…. meh summer. Sad for all the tomatoes I planted lol.
Fallingfeather
Oooh, avian tube worm trees!
Sen
I see a lot of zucchini in the future. Well, for the human population at least.
Hubert
Are the plants Gillie was sitting near real or alien?
Happy New Year!
the namely namester
they are from the avian planet, and they are like photosynthetic tube worms, so not exactly plant-ish
Sparky Lurkdragon
Those are avian plantworms, I believe!
evileeyore
“Real” or alien? //Real// or //alien//?
Okay now, as if alien plants aren’t real…
(I know what you meant, just giving you a hard time. 😛 )
Eyes5
Since the zucchinis are under cloches, I assume they’re not bee pollinated? Are they hand pollinated? Or have they been bred/modified enough such that they will produce fruits without fertilized ovaries?
1d4Nadg
you could release the latest brand of GMO pollinator _under_ the cloche and not have them fly everywhere. Although hand pollination is an option, it sounds very labor intensive to do that for every single vegetable you need to feed a sizeable human population
WayanayaW
I love you distance model Talita
Green Heron
Happy new year! a
Viashino_wizard
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Uzw1Zr1FE4
evileeyore
Someday I’ll have the space to garden again and setup zucchini, potatoes, and other things I like to eat. And then relearn how to struggle with zuccs gone wild.
Tyrone the Miner
Yes…People with bad consciousness are easily startled ….Right Talita ?!
Also….Zuccini Pie….Mmmhhh……Pie!
https://www.theseasonedmom.com/zucchini-pie/
rainynais
it is good to know that zucchini overproduction cannot be escaped even in space xD
Ceryl
I appreciate that even in the future people haven’t figured out how much zucchini to plant.
JoB
Sign next to the entrance of the server room: “No eating, smoking, drinking in server room”
https://www.runawaytothestars.com/comic/rtts-page-15/
Post-it added by the end of the week: “Unless you can stand doing either with zucchini, in that case, be our guest!!”
eden
that was my family with our eggplants!! (we struggled with the vine borers on the zucchini lol)
Kira
Zucchini fritters for days!!!
iscah
shredded zucchini is pretty good in hamburger helper. mealworm helper…?
Rad Internet Stranger
a
Rad Internet Stranger
Also, happy new year everyone!!
Zuorai
H(a)ppy New Year!
notanocelot
a
1d4Nadg
a
JoB
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/wer_A_sagt,_muss_auch_B_sagen
Tool-Using Mammalgirl
so-called “free thinkers” when a
Sunstorm
a
fishfacedterror
a
Heather
a
Arcstone
a
Apollo235
I love that Talita’s sigh is coming from her excurrent nostrils
Athelind Llewellyn Long
I know, right?
Common Handle
Gillie jumpscare! Also lots of zucchini… you could make so much bread with that. Enough that you’d probably never want to eat it again.
JoB
They’re the scourgette of all spacers! ;-P
Phasma Felis
Do centaurs sweat, or is that just a cartoon effect?
Jay Eaton
Obviously neither humans or centaurs are producing the cartoon sweatdrops I’m drawing, but centaurs do sweat. It can also lather like horse sweat does, due to a chemical that helps it wick up from their skin to the surface of their feathers. Now you know.
Amanda/OwlBear
this year was not the best year for cucurbits for us in the UK, but we still got a good few courgettes, I think we had some patty pans as well, but only really enough for a few meals in the weeks that they were fruiting, no trouble to keep up with
Uh
Big lady produces a small ‘a’