Ah, if only I had such garden problems as these. In my case, I can barely get kale to grow, let alone butternut squash. And we are at least a month away from having any harvestable vegetables. I know I must be doing something wrong. . . just can't figure out what. At least this year, I can recognize what's sprouted (unlike last year, when, well, nothing sprouted). Gotta love that Texas heat!
Last year, the Lord gave us so much rain all of the vegetables rotted and the flowers didn't do so well either, and all we had by the end of the season was onions, and we still have one left in the basement.
This year we planted zucchini, summer squash, two different tomatoes, just one cucumber plant, some bell peppers and rimmed the whole fenced-in area with onions and garlic, +2 blueberry bushes in the midst.
I did a bit of study into the whole zucchini and summer squash thing, and discovered that there are two different kinds of flowers, male and female. The male flowers appear at the end of a regular stem, whereas a female flower appears at the end of what looks like a tiny squash. So you need the male flowers to pollinate the female flowers. Well, all we got at the beginning was nothing but females, sort of like that castle in the Monty Python holy Grail movie. So a lot of these flowers were just curling up and little fake fruits were turning brown, and now all of a sudden we're getting male flowers. I've been doing what I call tickling the flowers using Q-tips. I'll stick the Q-tip into the male flower collecting the pollen and applying it to the female flowers and I go around painting every single flower by hand to try to get as many fruits as I can. The problem is now we've got like 20 or more fruits on each plant and I can't tell which ones are the good ones and which ones I should break off and throw away in order to conserve energy. Hopefully it'll become apparent soon. The onions are looking good. Thanks for your articles. Good stuff. And thanks for the song.
Ah, if only I had such garden problems as these. In my case, I can barely get kale to grow, let alone butternut squash. And we are at least a month away from having any harvestable vegetables. I know I must be doing something wrong. . . just can't figure out what. At least this year, I can recognize what's sprouted (unlike last year, when, well, nothing sprouted). Gotta love that Texas heat!
Yeah, we can sprout some good mosquito crops, too.
You guys get all the perks over there.
I'll remember you when the hurricane comes.
Ha. Well, I guess better than not being remembered at all. . . . . :P
Last year, the Lord gave us so much rain all of the vegetables rotted and the flowers didn't do so well either, and all we had by the end of the season was onions, and we still have one left in the basement.
This year we planted zucchini, summer squash, two different tomatoes, just one cucumber plant, some bell peppers and rimmed the whole fenced-in area with onions and garlic, +2 blueberry bushes in the midst.
I did a bit of study into the whole zucchini and summer squash thing, and discovered that there are two different kinds of flowers, male and female. The male flowers appear at the end of a regular stem, whereas a female flower appears at the end of what looks like a tiny squash. So you need the male flowers to pollinate the female flowers. Well, all we got at the beginning was nothing but females, sort of like that castle in the Monty Python holy Grail movie. So a lot of these flowers were just curling up and little fake fruits were turning brown, and now all of a sudden we're getting male flowers. I've been doing what I call tickling the flowers using Q-tips. I'll stick the Q-tip into the male flower collecting the pollen and applying it to the female flowers and I go around painting every single flower by hand to try to get as many fruits as I can. The problem is now we've got like 20 or more fruits on each plant and I can't tell which ones are the good ones and which ones I should break off and throw away in order to conserve energy. Hopefully it'll become apparent soon. The onions are looking good. Thanks for your articles. Good stuff. And thanks for the song.
Thank you for this kind response. I don't often get these and it really made my day. I may have to go out and ARTSEM my zucchini. Godspeed.