Do you remember this picture above? This was my garden on May 9th. I had lots of adorable little vegetable plants that I purchased at Lowes because I cheated and didn’t plant from seeds. My garden was so cute! I loved how everything was so organized and how I could read all of the cute little veggie markers telling me what each plant was. You all saw this picture and told me I overplanted. You told me I needed to transplant my veggies. I didn’t understand why that was necessary since everything was so cute and tidy. But, I took your advice. And, as you read last week, my husband and I replanted some of the veggies above. Well, below is an updated picture of my garden(s). I literally have acorn squash plants overflowing out of the garden. If I had this to do over again, I probably wouldn’t have planted the acorn squash in this bed because they are so greedy and so viney! I probably would have just tried planting them *gasp* in the ground.
Oh – I haven’t found any evidence of birds eating any of the plants but I have found that they like to perch themselves on the tomato plant wire thingys..
Below is a close up of the new raised garden bed that we transplanted the pepper plants in. Everything is flourishing and thankfully I haven’t lost any plants despite the shock of replanting them.
Below are baby red chili peppers. Thus far the “hot” peppers are the ones growing the quickest. I also have baby cayenne peppers. And, my jalapeno plant is still producing although it has seemed to slow just a bit. Everything I’m cooking is spicy right now with all of the jalapenos. I can only imagine the heat of my meals once the chili peppers and cayenne peppers are ready to be picked!
So, I’ve been spending A LOT of time figuring out the difference between boy and girl flowers. I didn’t even realize that I had to worry about pollination when I purchased all of the plants. I just thought the plants would take care of growing their veggies if I would take care of watering them. Oops. Since I only see one or two bees per day I know that I have had to help out. I actually just reread the post I made last week where I said that I had found two girl zucchini flowers. I lied. They were boy flowers. I just didn’t know it. And, the best part is I pollinated the boy flowers with other boy flowers. Ha. The girl flowers have started arriving and they are drastically different from the boy flowers.
To pollinate the flowers I have been removing the boy flowers and rubbing their pollen directly into the girl flowers. This seemed easier than the Q-tip method although I may attempt the Q-tip method with the fragile cucumber flowers.. So, my question for you is will the girl flowers reopen again or do they only open once? And, if they do reopen, do I add more pollen? (Reminder – I have no idea what I’m doing so would love any and all help!)
Above: Boy Flower.
Above: Girl Flower. The “fruit” is behind the flower.. I should have taken a picture of the side view..
Above: Yellow Squash. I did pollinate this so we shall see what happens.. It doesn’t look the best to me although I have no idea what it “should” look like.. So speaking of. Do any of you know how long it will take for a fruit to appear after pollination? So, for this yellow squash that I pollinated on Sunday, May 30th, how long should it take for the flower above to actually look like a yellow squash?
The picture above is a bit difficult to see but in the center is a baby zucchini with its flower. I pollinated the flower.. Have no idea what to expect now! And, I was surprised the zucchini was so big prior to pollination. Could it be that the flower was pollinated already by bees? The blossom was wide open yesterday so I pollinated it. Am I too late pollinating it? Are you all sick of my naive questions? 🙂
Above is a basil update. If you remember, I had my basil in a pot along with parsley. The basil wasn’t doing well at all. Many of you recommended I replant the basil as well as cut it down. I did both and it is starting to thrive again! And, I am almost thinking that the greedy squash leaves are helping shelter the basil a bit from the sun which is helping it! Thanks to everyone for recommending I replant the basil! I had just about given up on it!
The tomato plant I have potted still has the green tomatoes growing. Thus far they haven’t ripened. Above is on of the tomato plants in my raised garden bed and it has adorable little tomatoes growing. I have no idea how big they are supposed to get? But they are cute!
So, I am finding that with gardening come a skill that I lack. Patience. I find that with everything – I want FAST results. When I was losing weight about 3 years ago, I wanted the results quickly. But instead it took 6 months to lose 45 pounds. When I was speed training for my running, I wanted quick results. Instead it took lots of time and lots of effort to drop just seconds from my miles. I know many of you struggle with this as you email me asking how long it should take for you to start saving over 70% at the grocery store. My answer to you – give it time. Well, today as I was taking pictures, I was thinking about how sad it is that my cucumber plants are not producing any fruit or even giving me any female flowers. Well look at what I found. A baby cucumber with its flower. In my impatience I was already planning on writing about my lackluster cucumber plant but in reality, it was doing okay.
Oh – and an update on the cucumber leaves – they are still brown and brittle. I did purchase vegetable fertilizer with nitrogen and used it on Memorial Day. I didn’t use it on all of my veggies. Just the cucumber and jalapeno plants.
Questions for you:
1) Should I fertilize all of my veggies or just the cucumbers since they are struggling. And, if I fertilize the cucumbers, should I do it once a week?
2) Once a female flower is pollinated, will it open again and if so, does it need to be pollinated again?
3) My squash plants are getting extremely unruly with their overpowering leaves. a) Can I remove the brown leaves that are on the bottom of the plants and if so, where do I cut the leaves? b) Can I trim back any of the healthy green leaves and if so, where do I cut the leaves?
4) Is it too late to plant onions? If not, how and where do I find onion plants and how much space do they take up? I’m wondering if I can plant some amongst my pepper plants?
Thanks for coming to Addicted to Saving! Here’s a little bit about me so you can know who’s behind all these posts!
My name is Liza and I began my money-saving journey in the Spring of 2009 as a way to stretch a limited household income. I had lost my job and my hubby was self-employed. I launched Addicted to Saving in November of 2009 and it has grown by leaps and bounds. Since then, my hubby and I have struggled with the ups and downs of two failed adoptions and are now LOVING being parents to our little man Asher who we brought home from Ethiopia in August of 2013. I feel incredibly blessed to be able to help you save money. My goal is that you will have FUN and become empowered to save more and more money each week..
Your garden is looking great! I just today found my first baby tomato (about the size of a pea!). I am very excited. My problem is that I have ants eating my cabbage and bell peppers. They have taken down two plants already. Very bizarre. Hopefully they won’t do more damage. Keep us posted on your garden!
It is late for onions. You really need to get the book Square Foot Gardening . You can find a used copy on Amazon or EBay for just a few dollars. Also http://WWW.squarefootgardening.com is a great resource because that is really the type of gardening you are doing. Also, many insects help pollinate, not just bees. I like an all purpose , water soluble plant food. Happy gardening!
You’re doing great, Liza! The most important thing is that you are learning things, not only about gardening, but some great life-lessons as well. And I did not know that you lost 45 pounds! Well done! 🙂 About onions, you might be a bit late down there in Florida… Even in Illinois, now is a bit late to start planting things, unless you are able to purchase plants that have already been started. However, it never hurts to try! You do have a longer growing season in FL, so I say give it a whirl. You can plant from seed to produce onion sets, or you can plant the sets to produce full onions (my dad specializes in this!). However, onions do best in dry conditions. This is why most of the major onion growers are located in the West. You would need to be careful about rot, mildew, etc. if you plant them. But like I said, it never hurts to try (and learn some more lessons along the way!). You’ve given me some great gardening tips… I never knew about boy and girl flowers, except that there was male / female seed corn (stuff I learned from growing up on the farm). Good luck! And with the tomato plant wire thingys… They’re called tomato cages. 😉 Again, awesome job, Liza! Continue to keep us all posted.
When I planted my first garden, I would walk out every day to check progress–it’s a bit stressful at first because you read so much! Don’t fret about the pollination: if you see one you can help, go for it–the squash will be slow at first, some may even shrivel up and die–in a few weeks you will have more than you know what to do with! Next year plant them with a wide berth…too late for onions. Plant them when you plant potatoes (Mid march in my region). If you fertilize with too much nitrogen, you will get large leaves/less fruit–I’d read up on what you need where. And my final bit is that I did not have great luck with those wire frames on the tomato plants–they get heavy and tend to make the hoops fall over at some point. The raised beds look beautiful! It seems like all it takes is one year to really figure a lot of it out, so no worries! 🙂 Good Luck!
We have a garden with potatoes, tomatoes, zucchini, okra, green beans, cucumbers, pumpkins, carrots, lettuce, and sunflowers (for the birds). We let nature do her thing. We water it, maybe put some Miracle Grow in, and weed it. The pumpkins we grow mainly for the blossoms. You can bread them and fry them up. My family loves them! I let the bees and other bugs do the pollinating. When it comes time to pick the blossoms (here in Illinois, that time is still to come) I go out early in the morning and pick the open blossoms. Sometimes I have to gently shake out the bees but I don’t have any problems with them coming after me or anything. We do leave a few blossoms for pumpkins, maybe 10 or so. I sometimes get like 90 blossoms a week at the peak time. We have a lot of friends who ask for them.
I would just recomment trying things and each year you can find what works best for you. Have fun with it!