I decided that I ought to fill in the blanks and continue this blog, adding my culinary adventures while gardening takes a break over Winter. I thought about updating chronologically, but I think there's just too much context for me to blog as if I were in the moment; so I will choose particular parts of the garden and show how they changed since July. (Wow, that was half a year ago...!)
First, I'll start with my Squashes:
The pumpkin and butternut vines sprawled all over the lawn by early August. Personally, I was quite happy with this! My folks, however, bemoaned the lack of sunlight to their precious, precious lawn.
The two closest plants are zucchini; the yellowing vines come from the butternut, and the greener ones farther back (and also climbing the trellis!) are from the sugar pumpkin.
Pumpkins
Because of work, I had less time to garden; and the entire squash patch (two zucchini plants, one sugar pumpkin and one butternut plant) got hit hard by powdery mildew. Actually, I heard that because of the strange weather we had, everyone got hit by powdery mildew--even weeds growing on the side of the roads. So I don't feel quite so bad!
Photo to left: Pumpkin leaves dusted white by powdery mildew. Toward bottom of photo, yellow-er leaves of butternut plant mostly unaffected!
Over the entire season, I got seven fruits to set; two of which hung mid-air when the vines climbed up my neglected trellis monstrosity. Here are some photos of the fruits, green and new in early August:
Here are some photos of the pumpkins beginning to turn orange. I think they're absolutely gorgeous here.
Here they are, nearly ready in late August:
By early September, I had cut most of the fruit, lest the powdery mildew affect its taste/texture too much. This photo was taken on 4 Sep:
Above: three of my seven homegrown pumpkins (and an orange buttercup squash purchased from a farmers' market). Except for one, they all turned out this size, about 8-10 inches in diameter.
Of those, I gave one to Myro's aunt (Myro thought it might be nice if her young daughter could have some traditional pumpkin porridge); made soup from one, and baked the rest for my mom. She's diabetic, and got it in her head that pumpkins are great for people with diabetes.
The last pumpkin finished just larger than the size of my fist!
I baked a banana bread inside it and gave it to a friend. Come to think of it, I never did find out if it worked out or not!
Zucchini
The two zucchini plants got hit the hardest by powdery mildew (PM). Though maybe it was a tie with the pumpkin, since the pumpkin plant was just so extensive.
I had tried using Green Earth Garden Fungicide, but since my patch grown so big, I would need a quarter bottle to spray the entire patch; and at ten bucks a litre (even seven bucks a litre on sale), this would be too expensive for me.
A quick Google search showed me chamomile tea, garlic and tea tree oil were good mostly-common antifungal treatments I could apply in spray form. I ended up making a strong chamomile-garlic tea with a few drops of tea tree oil. I just had to make sure I didn't spray within a day of harvesting fruit.
This spray only kept the PM from spreading quickly, it did not kill it. And when I got busy with work, the PM took over and slowly killed everything.
I have no idea why, but red ants decided to take residence in my nasturtium and zucchini blossoms! I was enraged! I did a few silly things to try to deter them. Once, I was so angry, I threw my hot mint tea at the plant (it killed a zucchini leaf, but not much else).
Actually, mom fell in love with the brightly coloured nasturtiums, and I pulled them out for her to pot.
What did work: tearing up mint leaves and sprinkling them around and sometimes inside the blossoms. However, this sometimes led to bad fruit setting--because I was putting things inside flowers, sometimes even female flowers.
I just have this aversion to red ants, I'm not sure why, but it must be mostly psychological. I don't like them. I would settle for disfigured or aborted fruit if that meant no more red ants.
We also got a rather excitingly shaped zucchini squash. I think there must have been some cross pollination from the butternut:
Butternut Squash
As you could tell from the earlier picture of the garden bed, the leaves on my butternut vines began yellowing starting from the oldest leaves. A quick Google search revealed this to be (most likely) a nitrogen deficiency. Since the pumpkin was growing like crazy, I presume the butternut was starved for nitrogen. I worked a few scoops of blood meal into the soil and noticed a slight improvement within days.
Something interesting: The zucchini and sugar pumpkin took a hard hit from PM. Yet the butternut seemed mostly unaffected by PM! It was until much later in the season that PM became a problem for the butternut.
I was able to prevent worsening of PM by spraying the leaves with a solution of warm milk and water. I didn't measure, just eyeballed equal amounts in my spray bottle. I applied the spray every second or third day, to the tops and bottoms leaves that had not yet been severely affected by PM.
However, while spraying the leaves, I noticed fuzzy white spots under the leaves. I believe this may have been downy mildew.
I did get a single, lonely fruit to set!
I believe this next photo was taken after I had put blood meal into the soil. Notice the crack.
Then something strange happened. Discolouration. No softness, no open wounds. The discolouration occurred on the side that had been facing the ground, so I gently rotated the fruit. I was also worried that softness might later develop and attract insects, so I crumpled up a large sprig of mint and let it lay nearby.
I ended up cutting this fruit early, because I was just so scared something bad was happening. As it turned out, I cut it so early that seeds hadn't even formed! Live an learn. This was in early to mid -September and the fruit was about 10 inches long.
Myro and I roasted this squash in the oven with brown sugar and nutmeg. It was definitely too young!!
Still to come: Tomatoes! Carrots! Broccoli! Herbs! Compost!
No comments:
Post a Comment