Sex Organs?

Pollinating squash...

When I went out today I noticed that we had a bunch of little red tomatoes and one large red/green tomato but I'll talk about that later. Right now I want to talk about why our squash had been shriveling up and dying. It turns out that the squash produce male and female blossoms and they need to be pollinated male to female stigma. So I went online and read a bunch of articles on hand pollinating. Obviously the insects, bees and what not, have pollinate a few of the flowers properly but they don't get them all because they aren't look to go male to female they just go flower to flower. So you have to do some hand pollinating if you want to get the biggest harvest possible. 

I went out and tried but did not really succeed because all of the flowers were closed. The squash blossoms are supposed to open in the morning and stay that way until early evening but they weren't. My guess is the infamous rain. The sky was so dark it did seem like early evening. I did get a feel for what I needed to do and I figured out what the difference between a male blossom and female blossom is...

Male Blossoms have a stigma that looks like a yellow Q-tip top. Female blossoms have what looks like a few round stigma attached to make one big round with a hollow center. It looks like a smaller, yellow, b.b. gun ammunition cap.

Instructions to Hand Pollinate: 
1. Remove a male flower
2. Peel back the petals on the male flower to reveal the stigma
3. Rub stigma against (still attached) female stigma when open (should be easy to tell by stigma and fruit under) 
4. One male flower for every 3 female flowers
5. After 3 cut another and continue

Tomato Time...

I picked the tomatoes and pulled off the suckers. Suckers are usually the small set of leave growing in between to larger branches. Pulling these off allows the plant to put more energy into ripening the tomatoes. As you can see these were not perfectly ripe but they were close enough and they tasted amazing. I never like slightly green tomatoes but these were totally different. I loved them. I wanted leave some for the others to taste and I did but I meant to leave more. I couldn't resist eating more and more.... MMMMMM!

WATCH! Fruit Set

Fruit Setting...

When I first started my garden I didn't quite know what all the references meant when they said "fruit set" which caused me anxiety to no end. Things change when fruit starts to set in... I could of guessed that it was when the fruit started to grow but I didn't know what point in there growth was true setting. So now that I do know and can tell you that it means when the flowers start to turn I wanted to show you. 

All of our plants are at "fruit set" or have been "setting" for awhile now. 

The Accidental Pick

Sisters Birthday...

It was a beautiful and sunny day out but I didn't get to garden. It was my sisters birthday so we had plans. First it was lunch and nails then it was bar hopping so I spent my day out, resting to go out, or getting ready. I wish I'd spent it gardening because I haven't had a chance to do all the maintenance I've wanted to do since I got home.

So far I've picked a few more green beans and thinned out some carrots that weren't going to form because the roots were exposed. I did accidentally pick one carrot that was forming which was too bad but it gave me hope that I don't have carrot fly because it was forming well. Anyway, I plan on spending all day gardening tomorrow. I'm hoping the weather doesn't turn on me.

Carrots that weren't going to form, a radish, and the accidental pick. 

The container tomato plant in Patch. 

Picked another 25 beans and still have more to pick. 

Sweet like Syrup

Strawberries...

Mike got home from Atlantic City after making 11th place out of hundreds in the tournament. He took the 4:35am train to Union Station and got home at 9am. So he woke me up on his way in... I spent a good part of the early/late afternoon resting then went out to "Sea Magic" all of the plants. I attempted spraying the tomatoes but they are so huge it's impossible so I watered them, sprayed everything else, and lightly watered the strawberry containers with the magic. Then I picked a few berries. Mike helped and got to try his first ones. Two were sweet but not as sweet as the last. The last one was as sweet as strawberry syrup. It was amazing. Of course it looked slightly mashed but that's how the farmers market strawberries look too. So it was the best one as of yet. Amazingly sweet an the best I've EVER tasted. 

Everything else needs to be weeded, badly. Slugs are arriving and the garden just needs to be tended to in general. I have my work cut out for me on what is supposed to be the hottest weekend yet. If I don't maintain things will start to go to seed and die. So I've got get on it, just not today. Too tired.

The darkest one was the syrup one. 

Tomatoes everywhere.

Green bean plants and slugged lettuce. 

Doubling Trouble!!!

Growth Galore...

After being in Atlantic City for 5 days I came back to a giant garden. Everything had basically doubled in size. Here are a few pictures to give you an idea.

When I left the green arrow beans were maybe an inch long. Today 40-50 were ready for picking. I picked 21. 

The branches on all 4 of these tomato plants have grown at least 6 inches in every direction. We have about 40 tomatoes in all different shapes and sizes, at all different stages. 

All three of the crookneck plants have grown about 4 inches higher and 3-4 wider. The patty pan (front left) has grown about 2 inches each way. 

The only plant without at least 2 baby squashes to offer is the patty-pan, it has none so far. 

The carrot greens have gotten so thick you can't see any soil. They'll probably be ready for harvest in 10 days.

First radish from my second sowing. This one is twice the size of any of the first sowing but most of them probably won't produce because the roots became long and exposed. I'm not sure why. 

Container cantaloupe in Patch. Almost to the 3rd rung on the trellis. It was barely at the 2nd when I left and only covered the very center now its covering almost the entire trellis in width. 

Tomato-berry plant. This is the plant that wouldn't grow past 4 inches for weeks then shot up 12 and stopped. It's shot up another 3 inches, at least, and out another 4-5. Amazing! 

**More to come in another entry, it won't load properly with too many pics**

Potagar Patch- Video Update

Written...

I went out this morning to check on everything after the wind and cold and things were pretty good but not great. The wooden tomato cage I built was blown over and took the tomato with it. The cantaloupe plants that were in the greenhouse were completely wilted from the chill and the one planted was too. As the sun warmed up things got better and Mr. S. rebuilt the wooden cage so that it was sturdier and not, as he called it, so Charlie Brown. Other than that I didn't do much gardening because I wanted the sun to just warm everything back up. It rained last night so no watering was necessary and even if it hadn't rained I wouldn't have watered because that would have slowed the soil warming process. I thought the strawberries would be affected but they weren't, they are looking so amazing. I have at least 6 sizable berries and 25 small berries that look like they'll become sizable. I have about 50 flowers that should become berries. It's amazing! I took video of it all for you to see.

Video Update...

The video upload button isn't working so you'll have to click the link below to watch on YouTube...UGH!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rLT46uNoBYY

Bunny Repercussions

No Trellises for Bush Peas...

I recently looked up growing green arrow peas and found out that the type doesn't need a trellis. I was going to leave them in place because they looked good and they would provide a little support but basically they'd be wasted in that spot. They'd still look good but 3/4 of each trellis would have gone unused. Still I would have left them had a bunny not munched on my lettuce (in Potagar) today. The bunny gave me a push to put up the netting, at least around the lettuce bed, and the netting didn't sit right with the tepee trellises in place especially since the netting was already up on the bed in front of this particular bed. So I took them down and decided that since squash plants are pretty enormous they could use a trellis a piece. 

Baby crooknecks with squash blossom.

Trellis per plant. Side view.

Patty-pan and crookneck. Front view of trellises. 

Monsoon Patch

Rain and Hail...

Today was a hell of a weather day. It was sunny and beautiful out all morning and early afternoon then all of a sudden around 3pm a monsoon hit us. We had rain pellets the size of dimes coming down along with hail the size of gum balls. It seemed like the rain was going to last forever... I stood at the sun room door watching and by the time I got downstairs I saw the sun shining like crazy but it was still raining. Fifteen minutes after that the rain had stopped. 

Sadly, I didn't get to enjoy the beautiful part of the day because I had a pounding headache. I've never had such a bad headache in my life, it truly felt as if my head was palpitating. Between the monsoon weather and the headache I got absolutely no gardening done because after the headache and rain had stopped and I headed out it started raining again. I was lucky to get the pictures I did. The rain has done the garden well. I think it's the type of rain we've gotten. It'll be sunny for hours then pour in the afternoon. Natures done all the work for me the last few days and well. Everything has really started to shoot up, especially the spinach. 

Burpee...

Finally the sweet potato slips were delivered. They never sent me an Email that they were coming, like with the strawberries, so I wasn't checking for deliveries. Mike came down with a package and said "hey you got something but its all soggy and wet." I knew instantly what it was and that it'd been sitting out in the rain for awhile. I opened the strange box that said "live plants" on the side and inside were roots wrapped in damp paper, I'm not sure if they came that way or if that was from the rain, and a rubber band. They look funny, it's hard to explain so I've included a picture below. All I can say is that they don't look anything like the slips I'm growing on my sweet potato in the glass. If I'd know those would work out so well I would never have ordered these. Not because they look bad or dead, they do look weird, but because I would have like to save the money and I'd rather use what I started from scratch. Since Potagar calls for 7 sweet plants we would have needed them anyway but I'll only be using the ones I've grown from a potato in Patch. If you can grow plants from a seed or scraps due so... You know they won't infect your garden. You know how they've been treated and you feel a much greater sense of accomplishment. I can't wait to pull the growing slips off the sweet potato, put them in water, and watch them grow roots. Once, that happens I'll be able to plant them. It'll be a little later than recommended but according to the upcoming weather reports the temperature is going to get down below freezing, at night, for a couple of nights. After that, we should be all warm weather sun and blue skies for awhile. That is the type of weather sweet potatoes need to grow big tubers. 

Planting Georgia Jets...

In the direction pamphlet that came with the Georgia Jet sweet potatoes it says to wait until the evening to plant the slips and that it shouldn't be windy or rainy. Since it is both of those things currently, I won't be planting tonight. In part, I can't plant tonight because I didn't know they were coming and I need to add compost and hill the plots that will hold the tubers. At the moment the plots meant for the GJ's is shallow and will not produce a good size potato. So tomorrow during the day I'll amend both the Potagar and Patch plots meant for sweet potatoes. I'll be amending Patch not because it is a shallow bed but because it was recommended on Smart Gardener. It said that I should amend the top 8 inches with compost. I also want to make the bed even deeper than it is so I give the tubers even more space to grow. Rather than completely mixing in a few scoops of compost I'll add 8 inches and then mix a bit so the plants are planted in hills. Since I can't plant them in Potagar until tomorrow night I've but them in a cup of water with the moss they came wrapped in... it said in the pamphlet that this would keep them for a few days.

Green beans that I've thinned and kept in a cup with water. They've actually grown.

Cucumber plants in a container. Planted on May 7, 2013.

My prized radishes. These are the tallest in Patch so far. You can see the fuller root at the soil line, that's the radish.

First real flower in the 5G bucket. Surprisingly it is on the "grindylow," the plant that isn't supposed to make it.

Georgia Jet's delivered like this. Looking pretty dead but it said that should be the case and they were still healthy.

Sweet potato roots covered in the moss they were shipped in... I'm fairly concerned that there aren't more roots.

Cherry Bellby

Patch Cherry Belle...

I went into Patch for an hour today, about the only hour of sun we received. I looked at everything and checked for pest damage and then had a good look at the radishes. I went online last night and googled "cherry belle radishes" so that I could get some idea of what they were supposed to look like at harvest time. I was relieved to see that the harvested and size able radishes pictured were not much bigger than my biggest plants are now. So when I was making sure all the radishes were about 3" apart today I thinned one out next to my biggest plant. I wanted to make sure that it had enough space. It was a little plant and shaded by the others from the sun. I pulled it out and found a tiny baby cherry belle at the end. I wished I hadn't thinned it at first but it actually gave me confidence in the bigger plants. They are definitely growing a root veggie. 

Five Gallons...

After inspecting and pulling that one radish I took a good look at the 5G bucket. It's caused me some major concern because it was growing the strongest plants but with absolutely no flower buds and no signs of buds to come. On closer inspection today I saw signs of flower buds to come, finally. I have a feeling that even though they were the slowest to flower, that they will produce the most and best fruits. They really took there time to set up good roots, I'm guessing, and a good plant base so why wouldn't they set up good fruit. Confidence in Patch has returned! 

On an unrelated but interesting note the green beans I thinned and put in water have grown in the cup. I'll be planting them in a small container as an experiment tomorrow. 

Magic Juice

Arrived...

This morning my order finally arrived. I had placed the order for Sea Magic and a Predalure on April 29 and April 30th they said the "order shipped" but there was no tracking number or estimated delivery date so I just kept checking for it everyday. I didn't check today because I really didn't expect it and, of course, it came. I immediately opened it and look through all the instructions. At first, I was extremely confused by the Sea Magic directions. It said to pour the contents of the package into a 1 gallon bucket or bottle and that was it. I said to Mike "what is going on? Burpee advertised 60 gallons." What I didn't realize was that after you dissolve the contents you use that as your concentrate and mix 3 tablespoons of concentrate with every quart of water. Obviously, they weren't going to expect people to have a 60 gallon container to mix the contents into. So I mix half of the contents into 2 liters and zip locked the rest. I didn't even have a gallon bucket/container. Then I put it in a cool spot, as recommended, and went outside to hang the predalure. It actually came with 2 so I hung them both. One in patch and one on the Shephard hook in Potagar. We have a major earwig infestation in one of the empty beds so I figured we'd need all the help we could get. 

Sea Magic...

A few hours later after Mike left for his weekend trip I went upstairs to mix up a bottle of Sea Magic. I put 1.5 tbsp into 1.5 cups of water in a spray bottle. I sprayed all the plants, liberally, and watered the ones that needed it. I am so excited to see if this stuff works. I had to make 3 spray bottles but I finally got everything sprayed and watered. To be honest, I thought the plants were responding pretty instantly to the spray. They looked perkier after there spray down. The last bottle had about 1/2 a cup left when I was done so I poured it into the Topsy Turvy. You can water the plants and spray them with sea magic. Its up to you. The product is 100% organic so it doesn't matter how you use it, it's supposed to work.

Thinning...

After I finished spraying everything down I thinned a few of the plots. I thinned the green beans down to about 30 plants. I know I still need to thin them down to 18 plants but I want to figure out the trellis issue before I do so I thin the ones that aren't in prime placement for the second twine trellis, we'll need 2. I moved on to thinning the spinach. It's 4 plants per plot and 4 plots. At the moment, even after thinning, we have about 30 plants so I need to thin a little more there too but they are still in early stages so I want to give them time to show me there strength. 

Fencing...

Mr. S. built the first furry pest barrier today and I helped him staple gun the netting on before heading inside. 

Green beans I thinned today.

Roots of the thinned beans. I thought it was pretty amazing that the root system was already so big.

Fencing, its pretty amazing that you can hardly see a double layer of black netting around the bed. All you can really see are the posts and the corners of the netting.

Container spinach in progress.

Lemon Balm in progress.

All the watermelon seedlings I have so far. The count is 7 and they were all planted at different times in different forms.

Installing the Plants

Installing the plants....

I planted the lettuce, mesclun mix, spinach, and green beans because they are all cool/warm crops. I'll plant the rest in 2 weeks when we get into warm/hot weather. I built 1 more stake. I am so tired of writing because I happen to be writing a 12 page paper for school so I am going to leave it at that for the day and post pictures. I'll write much more tomorrow and update on video to make up for today's lacking post.