Hand Pollinating the Squash

Early this morning, water stopped falling from the sky, making it possible for me to get a better look at what is going on out there. Low and behold, lots and lots of flowers! And several fledgling yellow squash just growing away.

The flowers open up and in the morning and only last for the day, so I decided to take the opportunity to hand pollinate a couple of them. I summoned up all my knowledge of plant science from middle school and referenced ehow.com before getting started. The male flowers were blooming on normal, green stems while the female ones were blossoming on top of the baby squash itself. In order for the tiny squash to develop it needs pollen from the anthers at the center of the male flower.

Normally, insect traffic alone is enough to pollinate the flowers, but lots of gardening sites recommend hand pollinating just to make sure all your viable vegetables get to grow up to their potential. So I just snapped of a male flower, held the petals back and brushed the pollen onto the center of the female flower.

It looks like a couple fruits have already set naturally. Time will tell if my effort to hand pollinate a couple flowers will produce better developed squash. I doubt it, really. None of the tiny yellow squash have shriveled or appear malformed as a result of a lack of sufficient pollination. I think I have a pretty healthy garden growing, despite the crowding issue.

I removed two tomato plants this morning to give the others some space. One was a tiny little thing that has just failed to grow as tall and strong as the others. The other was about a foot and a half tall and was simply too closely planted between two very strong tomato plants. I replanted the big one in Bed Number Two, but I'm not sure if it will make it because I wasn't able to recover much of its root system without disturbing the other plants' roots.

Flash Flood Warnings

It has been raining and raining and raining. And raining.

I haven't been able to spend much time in the garden, but it appears the plants are doing fine without me. Lots of flowers are beginning to bloom on the zucchini and yellow squash and buds are definitely developing on the pumpkin and cucumber plants. It looks like it won't be long before we'll be eating the squash actually-- check the photo!

I managed to get some plants into my second bed before the monsoon hit. I decided to plant three rows, instead of four, to reduce crowding. I planted several tomato plants and a few pea plants in the back row. The second row is home to a lettuce plant, zinnia, onion and lots of spinach. The front row has basil, dill, cucumber, 2 zucchini and 1 yellow squash.

I wish I had thought to put the onion in the middle of my first bed, then the zucchini and pumpkin and yellow squash wouldn't be all smushed up against one another. The pumpkin and cucumber are starting to put out vines too. Are they going to choke one another with those? I installed some stakes and a little trellis for them to grab hold of; hopefully, that'll help.

Saturday Morning is for Gardening

Check it out! I got all the remaining grass out of my new bed and got all the rich soil in! And it was so much easier since the rains.

I will probably get my transplants in tomorrow. I want to spend a little bit of time planning exactly what will go where. I think I'm only going to plant three rows. In my first bed I planted four and now that I see how big the plants are growing I can see that was cutting it really close.

I'm also worried that some of the herbs I'll be planting will be very attractive to the neighborhood birds. I have basil, dill, cilantro, oregano, parsley and mint. I'm especially concerned about the mint. I think I may leave that out of the bed and just plant it in a container. The birds already got to it once. Plus from what I've read it sounds like the mint is going to grow all willy nilly and try to take over the plot. I'm considering planting the mint in a container and then planting the container in the ground to prevent it from spreading.

I'm also going to plant some leftover onion, cucumber, zucchini and tomato seedlings. And I have a freshly sprouted yellow squash plant and peas, too.

What am I going to do with my zinnia seedlings? If I have room in the new bed I'd love to put one or two in the ground, but I don't want to attract butterflies. Butterflies mean caterpillars, and caterpillars do a lot of damage.

Also- very exciting- I've got my first flowers on the zucchini plants! Hopefully, I'll have zucchini really soon. And check out the yellow squash in the foreground of this pic!

Prepping the Bed is Hard Work

This is the bed as it stands at the moment. I woke up this morning and worked in a bag of last year's top soil and two enormous bags of gardening soil. I took a break to head to the garden center and pick up a few more bags of hummus + manure and two more enormous bags of gardening soil. Those two bags are still sitting in my trunk because I haven't figured out how to get them from the trunk to the garden while my cousins are still asleep. But once those are in I'll be ready to do some planting.

I've been evaluating my seedlings trying to figure out which are ready and which still need some time. I definitely overplanted so that will work in my favor. If I transplant a couple prematurely I'll have some back ups standing by if it doesn't work out, my understudies. Though I'd like to avoid transplanting too early if at all possible. I wish I had planted my seeds earlier this spring, then they'd all be ready. Anyway, the zucchini looks ready and maybe the cucumber too. And the pumpkins won't be far behind.

Zucchini is on the left, yellow squash on the right