Well, the garden is progressing nicely, if slower than I feel prepared to handle. The lettuce will be ready soon. I actually already harvested about half of a rather spindly broccoli rabe crop. We ate it. It had some tiny holes bored through, but Owen doesn't feel that the $50 I want to spend on nematodes (bug parasites that help control pests) is justified at this point (since we haven't budgeted for all of the gardening expenditures we've been incurring). I told Owen gardening makes me feel powerful, but he told me empowered is a better word to use with milder connotations because it makes me seem like less of a megalomaniac. Anyway, I have some little tomatoes now, still green, and we've gotten a few strawberries. I was researching my zucchini problem: we have beautiful flowers with no mini-zucchinis connected. It would seem that we either have all male or all female flowers, or that we don't have enough bees to pollinate. This is a serious problem, one that perhaps goes a little beyond my skill. Online I found all sorts of
suggestions involving q tips and spreading of pollen in female flowers. Oh dear, I should have paid more attention to Mr. Underkoffler in 10th grade biology. If anyone is able to identify whether this is a female or male flower from the picture, please let me know. Uncle Darry gave me some raspberry bushes, one of which even has raspberries on it. Needless to say, this is wildly exciting for the family. Well, I'm not sure if "wildly excited" exactly describes Owen's relationship with the garden. Mildly interested, maybe. Micah's excitement helps to make up for some of his lacking in this area. Greenbeans are my big obsession lately. The top left picture shows them growing along a fence. I now actually have them growing along five different fence areas. Spreading out the risk, so to speak. My neighbor plans to spray her back yard for weeds, so I anticipate a certain amount of loss of greenbeans against her fence. I say "anticipate" but I certainly will be devastated if and when such loss occurs. Several of the bean
plants have gotten pretty pink flowers, which I guess means beaners are on the way (unless we have some weird male/female flower issue of course). I can't wait to feed my family off the fat of the land.
Well, the garden is progressing nicely, if slower than I feel prepared to handle. The lettuce will be ready soon. I actually already harvested about half of a rather spindly broccoli rabe crop. We ate it. It had some tiny holes bored through, but Owen doesn't feel that the $50 I want to spend on nematodes (bug parasites that help control pests) is justified at this point (since we haven't budgeted for all of the gardening expenditures we've been incurring). I told Owen gardening makes me feel powerful, but he told me empowered is a better word to use with milder connotations because it makes me seem like less of a megalomaniac. Anyway, I have some little tomatoes now, still green, and we've gotten a few strawberries. I was researching my zucchini problem: we have beautiful flowers with no mini-zucchinis connected. It would seem that we either have all male or all female flowers, or that we don't have enough bees to pollinate. This is a serious problem, one that perhaps goes a little beyond my skill. Online I found all sorts of
what in the world is a megalomaniac??
ReplyDeleteDelusions of grandeur
ReplyDelete