gardening update, Tuesday 7/18/17
Jul. 18th, 2017 09:39 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
edenfallingBasically, aside from the continuing problem of marauding squirrels and their tendency to chomp everything because they forget they hate the taste of peppers, everything is going very well.
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1. peppers A2, A4, A6, B1, B3, and B5 - Monday, 17 July 2017
2. peppers C2, C4, C6, D1, D3, and D5
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3. peppers E2, E4, and E6
4. peppers F1, F3, and F5
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5. poor pepper A2 got beheaded Sunday night
6. pepper B5, which got beheaded several weeks ago and continues recovering nicely
7. the Lazarus pepper
The majority of the peppers are now tall enough that I have wrapped the loops at the top of their stakes around their central stems. A few of those plants have even developed visible buds!
I now have three peppers running a few weeks behind the others, though: A2, which just got munched a couple days ago; B5, which got munched a few weeks ago; and E6 which had the fungal problem and might need a repeat dose of fungicide around its roots. C6 and D1 are also running behind, though less drastically. That is because they nearly drowned while I was away on vacation and left their planter a crucial two inches too close to the gutter waterfall, and it's hard to grow properly when your soil has turned into a non-Newtonian fluid. (Don't worry! I dried them out, gave them some replacement soil and a good dose of fertilizer to replace lost nutrients, and they are doing fine now.)
The Lazarus pepper's fruit is growing nicely! It does feel a little bit softer/squishier than I would ideally like, but I plan to give all the plants EVEN MORE EGGSHELLS later this week, which should help. Its leaves are likewise still a bit yellower than I would ideally like, but less so that a few weeks ago. Also -- and I am not sure how evident this is in my photographs -- the Lazarus pepper doesn't really have a central stem; it splits into two 'branches' about six inches up from its roots. And while the other flowers on the branch with the single extant fruit have come to nothing, the OTHER branch is now in the process of developing buds, so! We shall see what happens. :D
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In summary: all my squash are blooming!
8. Tan - Monday, 17 July 2017
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9. Sethera, top view
10. Sethera, side view (note tiny squash!)
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11. Azer, top view
12. Azer, side view
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13. Covera, top view
14. Covera, side view
Okay, more details. :) As you can see, Tan got hollowed out a bit -- probably by those continued menaces otherwise known as squirrels. (I am frankly impressed; squash stems and leaves are prickly once they get past the very tiny baby phase.) The utterly shredded leaf, however, fell victim to the gutter waterfall before I noticed the mauling and ran outside to move it about six inches to the left. (I got thoroughly soaked in the process, despite using an umbrella. It rained buckets last Thursday.) Anyway, the plant is attempting to regrow its central stem and leaves, and probably won't attempt to fruit until it gets further on that basic project.
Sethera continues to be stable in its little pen of plastic trellises, and in fact has started to grow an actualfax squash! Yay! So far this one doesn't seem afflicted with the blossom end rot that did in Azer's first attempt at fruiting, but as mentioned in the pepper update post, I am going to be dosing all plants with more eggshells later this week just on general principle.
In fact, Azer and Covera are each ALSO attempting a tiny actualfax squash -- Covera's is by far the smaller, but you can kind of see it in the top view photo, whereas Azer's hid so well I didn't notice it until Tuesday morning and consequently have no good picture of it.
The squash blossoms are HIGHLY attractive to insects -- particularly something that is either a type of solitary bee, or a fly that's wearing a pretty good bee disguise. They also attract spiders, presumably as a secondary consequence of attracting insects. The flowers are quite ephemeral and bloom for one day at most, often only part of a day, before furling back up and starting to wilt.
And that is that for this week. :)
[[original Tumblr post (peppers) for when the embedded images inevitably break ; original Tumblr post (squash) for when the embedded images inevitably break]]
. 1. peppers A2, A4, A6, B1, B3, and B5 - Monday, 17 July 2017
2. peppers C2, C4, C6, D1, D3, and D5
. 3. peppers E2, E4, and E6
4. peppers F1, F3, and F5
. 5. poor pepper A2 got beheaded Sunday night
6. pepper B5, which got beheaded several weeks ago and continues recovering nicely
7. the Lazarus pepper
The majority of the peppers are now tall enough that I have wrapped the loops at the top of their stakes around their central stems. A few of those plants have even developed visible buds!
I now have three peppers running a few weeks behind the others, though: A2, which just got munched a couple days ago; B5, which got munched a few weeks ago; and E6 which had the fungal problem and might need a repeat dose of fungicide around its roots. C6 and D1 are also running behind, though less drastically. That is because they nearly drowned while I was away on vacation and left their planter a crucial two inches too close to the gutter waterfall, and it's hard to grow properly when your soil has turned into a non-Newtonian fluid. (Don't worry! I dried them out, gave them some replacement soil and a good dose of fertilizer to replace lost nutrients, and they are doing fine now.)
The Lazarus pepper's fruit is growing nicely! It does feel a little bit softer/squishier than I would ideally like, but I plan to give all the plants EVEN MORE EGGSHELLS later this week, which should help. Its leaves are likewise still a bit yellower than I would ideally like, but less so that a few weeks ago. Also -- and I am not sure how evident this is in my photographs -- the Lazarus pepper doesn't really have a central stem; it splits into two 'branches' about six inches up from its roots. And while the other flowers on the branch with the single extant fruit have come to nothing, the OTHER branch is now in the process of developing buds, so! We shall see what happens. :D
-----
In summary: all my squash are blooming!
8. Tan - Monday, 17 July 2017
. 9. Sethera, top view
10. Sethera, side view (note tiny squash!)
. 11. Azer, top view
12. Azer, side view
. 13. Covera, top view
14. Covera, side view
Okay, more details. :) As you can see, Tan got hollowed out a bit -- probably by those continued menaces otherwise known as squirrels. (I am frankly impressed; squash stems and leaves are prickly once they get past the very tiny baby phase.) The utterly shredded leaf, however, fell victim to the gutter waterfall before I noticed the mauling and ran outside to move it about six inches to the left. (I got thoroughly soaked in the process, despite using an umbrella. It rained buckets last Thursday.) Anyway, the plant is attempting to regrow its central stem and leaves, and probably won't attempt to fruit until it gets further on that basic project.
Sethera continues to be stable in its little pen of plastic trellises, and in fact has started to grow an actualfax squash! Yay! So far this one doesn't seem afflicted with the blossom end rot that did in Azer's first attempt at fruiting, but as mentioned in the pepper update post, I am going to be dosing all plants with more eggshells later this week just on general principle.
In fact, Azer and Covera are each ALSO attempting a tiny actualfax squash -- Covera's is by far the smaller, but you can kind of see it in the top view photo, whereas Azer's hid so well I didn't notice it until Tuesday morning and consequently have no good picture of it.
The squash blossoms are HIGHLY attractive to insects -- particularly something that is either a type of solitary bee, or a fly that's wearing a pretty good bee disguise. They also attract spiders, presumably as a secondary consequence of attracting insects. The flowers are quite ephemeral and bloom for one day at most, often only part of a day, before furling back up and starting to wilt.
And that is that for this week. :)
[[original Tumblr post (peppers) for when the embedded images inevitably break ; original Tumblr post (squash) for when the embedded images inevitably break]]
