Beets & carrots are thriving and harvesting has begun.
Maxibels are plentiful & continue to bloom as periodic harvesting continues. Delicious! Ditto for Swiss Chard.
Noticed a few days ago that Favas were ready to harvest, but by the time I got to them something nasty had devoured half of them and put ugly black holes into others. We have legions of earwigs - could it be them? Yield for 10 foot row: only 1/2 cup of Dirk's Mom's Dip: delightful torture for three ...
Also, lots of squash blooms, but something appears to be chewing them off, and can't see any baby squash. Any idea what's happening?
Hi! I have some chewed off squash blossoms too, due to squirrels mostly, but still I have lots of squash too. This may sound a silly question, but do you have a good mix of male and female flowers? Last year, I ended up with plants that gave me mostly male flowers, I think, and out of 6 plants I recolted only about 6 tiny squash. This year, I seem to have a good mix of both flowers and there are so many bees areound that they are thriving. Even though some are chewed off, I'm still overharvesting :-)
ReplyDeleteThanx and that poses a great question: how do you tell male from female flowers? Only half of my squash plants came up, so it's quite ppossible that I don't have a good mix or that there's just not enough plants ...
ReplyDeleteYou can tell them apart quite easily. One way is with the stems. The male flowers have very long thin stems. The female flowers are close to the plant. I find it a bit hard to differentiate them that way because I have mixed squashes and they are all a bit different. The other way is fool proof and quite funny, if you have 15 year old mind like me: when the flower is open, look inside. If there is one single standing pistil, it is a male. If there are a bunch together, looking like a yellow blob, it is a female flower. Bonne chance !
ReplyDeleteTalking with a few of our local farmer friends they said that they lost all there fava beans do to the insane heat wave that we got a few weeks back. They just didn't enjoy it at all. As for the black on the pods that is normal. They will start to go black as they over mature it is just the pod drying up. Earwigs being one of the most recognized insect garden pest can also be a good bet that they had some to do with it as well.
ReplyDeleteWow - now I feel lucky that I got any favas at all! Still, I could tell they were at their peak last week; I wish I`d got to them sooner. Oh well, still have some seeds to try again next year.
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