I saw this little brightly colored guy while I was picking basil to hang dry. With the naked eye, it looked like it had bright pink and blue stripes! My basil has been fabulous. I have three pots and they have all been producing nice leaves and surviving the heat. My thyme died after I rearranged the pots. Oregano seems OK, just slow growing. Cucumbers were a complete bust. Not a single cuke. Maybe I’ll just plant more basil.
I have learned something new. This in itself is not new; I enjoy learning new things and strive to do so often. What I learned about cucumbers surprised me, and made me realize how little I know about horticulture (this is also not new, the things I don’t know about are a vast expanse). I have learned that there are male and female flowers on a single cucumber plant. And, I learned how to tell them apart.
I have learned about this because I have three mounds of nice healthy cucumber plants, and no cucumbers. Nada. Zip. I thought a cucumber was developing, but then it withered away. It turns out that what I saw was the unfertilized stem of a female flower. The female flower has what looks like a tiny cucumber behind the bloom, the male flower does not. My plants have many, many blooms, but the usual pollinators are not visiting, maybe because they were all in the meadow with the wildflowers and these are closer to the house. Yes, we do have an exterminator come and treat the outside of the house, but not the yard or woods. I have seen bees in the meadow and in the front yard, but mostly just dragonflies and ground wasps around the cucumbers. So now I have a soft artist’s paint brush tucked in my egg apron so that I can pretend to be a bee and transfer pollen from flower to flower. Maybe we’ll see cucumbers before the vines die.
The day lilies are blooming in my front yard. I love when I find the right spot to plant and the flora flourishes. These are particularly fancy with their triple petal layers.
I now have a carrot that has gone to seed. It somehow escaped the harvest (which was rather a sad harvest, as I planted carrots just to see what happened, but didn’t prep our hard clay soil for carrots, so the roots were small and stunted). As it grew up tall and lush with the spring rain, I decided to just let it do its thing. The flowers are impressive bundles of white! I have since been reading more about carrot seed collection (this is a good article), and it will be interesting to see what, if anything, will grow from the seeds. This is a longer experiment; I need to wait until the end of summer when the flower heads turn brown, then collect the flower heads and let them dry completely before collecting the seeds.
I filled up the chicken feed bucket and had an empty feed sack. I had some dirt left over from the strawberry planting project. I had some carrots that were getting leggy in the fridge. I’ve seen some posts on planting potatoes in sacks. Why not? I’ll try planting carrot tops.
I folded the top of the feed sack down to the base, to form a double walled container. I cut some drainage holes in the bottom of the sack and filled it with dirt. I cut the top inch or so off the carrots and planted them in the soil with just the tops showing, then gave them a good water. In the photo, behind the feed sack, you can see I’m doing a similar experiment with green onions. My basil is doing well (right side of photo), and I even have some watermelon sprouts (left side).
Critters and Craft 