July 16, 2008

overabundance

Overabundance, excess, surplus, flood, overload, surfeit, glut, oversupply, extra, excessive, too much ……. I was able to keep up with my spring lettuce this year even though there was a lot of it. And there has been a lot of broccoli, but not too much. But the favas and the summer squash are another story. They just won’t stop. Vicia faba Cucurbita pepo (squash)

June 29, 2008

zucchini leaves

I was surprised at how pretty my zucchini leaves are. They have a mottled silver gray pattern that is very bright on the mature leaves. Someone asked if this is mildew. No. Its a natural pattern on healthy zucchini leaves. Different cultivars have different shaped leaves and different amounts of silver.

May 18, 2008

it’s tomato and squash planting week!

This looks like a good week to transplant my tomato seedlings. Also my squashes, pumpkins and cukes. The temperature is staying sort of warm – about 50 F at night and up near 70 on sunny days. I’ve seen nearby gardens with tomatoes and squash already planted. I think its time to set mine out. I have some fancy thermal plastic this year. Its from Johnny’s and lets near IR through, but not visible light. This is supposed to warm up the soil well. I’ll try this under my tomatoes…

November 1, 2007

Happy Halloween

I bought a nice big pumpkin to carve for Halloween. My son carved it and I am saving the seeds to plant next year. The pumpkin I grew in my garden is the tiny one on the table next the two gourds – also from my garden. Skippy was surprised and barked loudly at all the kids who dressed up as Elmo or a dinosaur and came to our door for candy tonight. Happy Halloween! Pumpkin — Cucurbitaceae spp.

October 12, 2007

teeny pumpkin

Here’s my tiny little pumpkin. It’s even smaller than it looks. I’m leaving it on the vine to make sure its fully ripe. The stem is starting to turn brown, but there’s still some green on the fruit. No frost in the forecast, so I think its fine to leave it to ripen longer.

September 15, 2007

Dad’s pumpkin

My parents have a beautiful pumpkin ripening in their garden. A real nice one! The vine is crawling out across the lawn and my dad carefully mows around it. It looks like they will be able to make a nice jack-o-lantern for Halloween. Or a pumpkin pie. I have bad news about my pumpkin flower – it did not set. Oh well. 🙁 (My little Olympus Stylus 720SW camera has a lot of trouble with the combination of orange and green – pumpkin and grass. It does great with the…

September 12, 2007

a female pumpkin blossom!

Finally a female pumpkin flower has opened on my giant pumpkin vines! I’m sooo excited. But am keeping my fingers crossed that the fruit sets. This flower bloomed three days ago – on Sunday. There were lots of bumble bees around, so I am hoping they pollinated this flower. Yesterday the flower had closed and the pumpkin still looked good. We’ll see. I was surprised to see how different the female flower looks from all the male ones (the plants have many of these). Very fancy! “The female flower contains…

August 31, 2007

giant pumpkin vines!

Thank goodness I only planted four large pumpkin plants! They are monsters! I bet they are growing a foot a day. And I have no doubt they will cover my entire garden by the season’s end if I don’t keep after them. I tie them to the fence around my garden. Since this is nearly covered now, I will soon let them crawl on the lawn. The variety of my big vines is Howden, an old standard for Halloween pumpkins and produces fruit 15-25 pounds (up to 40 pounds) in…

August 30, 2007

mystery squash

I had a whole bunch of squash plants that sprouted in my compost bin this spring. Many of them volunteered in the garden, too. This is the first of the fruits. It looks like a gourd I had on my table at Thanksgiving!

August 30, 2007

another mystery squash!

This is the fruit of another one of the squash plants that volunteered in my compost this spring. A medium-sized pumpkin. Its still tiny – only about 3 inches across.

weeks and counting until my last spring frost

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