April, 2010

...now browsing by month

Shrivelling Squash & Earthbox Peppers

Monday, April 26th, 2010

Early squash fruits are dying as spinsters. It seems that the females are early bloomers. There have already been four squashes that have flowered and are now shrivelling away because not a single male flower has bloomed yet to provide the life-giving male pollen to these eager ladies. Painful to watch. But I think the first male will open tomorrow morning.

Multipik Unpollinated and shrivelling away

Two Eight Ball Squash Sans Pollination

Earthbox Squash at Day 44

Peppers are looking healthy, but so far no peppers forming. The jalapeno plant is in the lead with lots of blooms, but they seem to be falling off the plant before a pepper can form. Need to see if that is normal or an indication of some issue.

Earthbox Peppers

Was Happy to See a Couple of These on the Peppers

Posted in Earthbox, Vegetables | 4 Responses »
Tags: squash

Bean Replacement

Sunday, April 18th, 2010

I foolishly ignored obvious signs of some leaf-destroying predator on one of my bean plants and woke up today to find the plant sheared off at the base. So I dropped in another bean seed in its stead. This time I chose a Kentucky Wonder pole bean since this plant is near the fence. The others are bush beans.

Posted in Vegetables | 4 Responses »

Earthbox Update

Saturday, April 17th, 2010

Squash is coming along nicely at day 35 since direct-seeding in the Earthbox. The Eight Ball variety is winning the race at this point–seems much more vigorous that the other varieties. Second is probably Multipik, followed by Zephyr. The cucumber I planted isn’t worth mentioning yet–very slow growing at this point.

Now we just need to get some bees involved.

The Eight Ball squash is the early favorite

Multipik babies appearing

Zephyr -- two tone baby squash just visible

Earthbox Squash at day 35

Peppers are starting to take off. Very interested to see how they do in the Earthbox.

Peppers in the Earthbox

Bougainvillea shot--they're starting to bloom!

Posted in Earthbox, Vegetables | 4 Responses »
Tags: peppers, squash

Replacing Tomato

Tuesday, April 13th, 2010

The one original seedling that I planted early in March that was still left in the garden (I replaced all the others a couple of weeks ago) has done nothing. It’s coming out and will be replaced by a Black Krim, which was the most interesting variety I could find at my local nursery.

I have also lost the diagram I made of the garden that indicated what was planted where, so now I am not sure which plant is which (except for Japanese Black Trifele, which has an unusual leaf form (“potato leaf” I believe is the term)). But I think this is the list of varieties I will have planted after replacing the last of the early seedlings: Black Cherry, White Currant, Sungold, Early Girl, Japanese Black Trifele and Black Krim. If I am lucky enough to get any fruit from any of the plants, I’ll be able to discern the variety at that time.