On July 9th, 2013 I took a few pictures of the garden to document some of our progress. Now these seem terribly out of date, as the garden has changed so much since then, but here they are any way.
The above picture includes our Blue Lake pole beans, which are climbing fast now, and our small sugar pumpkins. It seems like in just a couple days the pumpkin plants have grown a lot more than what is shown in this picture. I noticed the other day that there are a few female blossoms forming on the plants, although none are actually blossoming yet. I shifted around some of the vines so that they won't grow on the grass. I don't want them getting cut with the lawn mower.
This is another view of the pumpkin plants.
The Ronde de Nice zucchini are growing very well, as the above picture shows. I just love their leaves; they are truly really pretty plants.
Since last week, the blossoms that formed on the plants have started blooming, and they started with the female flowers. I was a bit confused by this, as the zucchini plants I've seen before start with the male blossoms normally. From what I've read, however, heirloom zucchini are a bit different from other zucchini because the female blossoms usually bloom first, and the males second.
Luckily, we have about ten or eleven plants, so there's already been plenty of each kind of blossom, but I haven't seen a lot of bees around. I Googled how to pollinate the flowers myself, and quickly learned that you can take the male flower and brush the pollen from it inside the female flower. I tried it with a few of the female flowers, and two of the little zucchini at the end of the flowers seem to be starting to grow, but we won't know for sure whether they were effectively pollinated until the flowers fall off.
We have a red currant bush with tons of currants ripening on it as well. I picked these last week, but we still have a lot on the plants. I made two batches of red currant scones with them.
Megan
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