Good morning, we are once again at that point in the road
where there are female flowers on the summer squash and the guys seem to have
gone fishing!
I am not exactly sure why this happens but it seems to
happen with all the cucurbits. Maybe it is not warm enough to develop male
flowers or maybe it is to start drawing in bees for when the men come back
from,” fishing” There are several aborted fruits because there is no way to
pollinate them. Maybe If I remember I could save some male squash flowers from
the fall in the freezer for early blooms in the spring. This could be
interesting and worth a try.
My experiment with beneficial insects seems to be working.
My transplanted lady bugs are staying put. There also seems to be a lot of
aphidius wasps finding their way under the fabric to mummify aphids for their
eggs to hatch.
In years past I have purchased lady bugs to control aphids
and it always seemed that the results were less than desirable. Most would up
and leave even if I did several small releases each night. Maybe because I am catching and releasing
local lady bugs they are more amiable to this process.
Because it has been so warm the lady bugs found my finished
broccoli and colonized it so that I have a ready to use lady bug farm. It would
be nice if I could have a repeat of this next year. Only time will tell
I do not know how long the peas will hold on. I am seeing a
little decline in the first bed but the second looks as healthy as can be. I am
sure there will be peas to the end of the month and maybe into May It would be
neat to have peas, beans squash and cukes to offer all at the same time. In
years past the peas have been long finished before any of the summer veggies
were ripe.
I am going to plant a fall crop of peas but I am going to
germinate the seeds first and plant them in July. I will cover them with 70
fabric and see if I can repeat last July’s peas that germinated and grew among
the sweet potatoes. I did get some seeds from these plants but not enough to do
anything with. I would not have thought it possible to grow them at that time
of year and especially as hot as last July was Some things you just got to try!
This week I harvested chard, kale, green onions, carrots,
lettuce, beets, basil, and peas. Please email as to availability.
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