Garden Update

A garden update: 05-23-07

Everything in this picture is so green. If I had taken a picture of the backside of the garden, you’d see purple and pink petunias, pinkish white and red geraniums, purple hydrangeas, yellow calendulas and pink impatiens. This part of my garden is mainly for vegetables and herbs. On the right hand corner, I have an abundance of tomatoes ranging from roma, marglobe, supersweets, and large chery red tomatoes. I also have Straight 8 and Marketmore cucumbers, peppers (kung pao peppers, jalapeno, California Wonders, Peruvian peppers), peas, Sequoia strawberries, Black Beauty Eggplant, garlic, pearl onions, green onions, catmint, basil, chamomile, and so much more I can't remember.

I also have a squash (early prolific variety) in a self-watering pot that is so huge. The leaves are the size of both my hands. I already have two fruits on them. Due to a lack of pollinators (bees, insects, etc), I’ve had to hand pollinate the flowers. This is a relatively simple process and only requires two things: your hands. The squash flower does not contain both female and male parts but instead the plant produces two types of flowers: female flower, which looks like a flower attached to a mini squash and a male flower that looks like an ordinary flower. You simply remove the male flower from the plant, peel away the petals which will reveal a yellow-like q-tip and then you proceed to dab the female flowers with the male flower q-tip. That’s all there is to it! Simple! Here’s a picture of my result of hand pollinating.

And with any gardening endeavor, any gardener can tell you that there are bugs to deal with. Right now, I'm battling the dreaded white flies. I've been battling them with some insecticidal soap but I think my petunias are doing a fine job of killing them. The white flies seem to enjoy my petunia plants a lot. The thing with petunias is that they have tiny, sticky hairs on their stems which acts like a sticky traps and the white flies don't have a chance when they land on my petunias because they're essentially stuck and die as a result! I knew my love of petunias would pay off eventually!

My flowers are doing well in this heat too. We've been having 90 degree temps and the shade loving plants don't even mind. My impatiens are still blooming and the other flowers are forming buds. The avocado plant I planted a couple of months ago has doubled in size. Well, that's all folks for now...