Sexy Pumpkins

21 Wednesday Oct 2009

Posted by ninagarden in garden, gardening, pumpkins, Uncategorized

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Well, here is an update on the pumpkin situation. The one Cinderella pumpkin sits on my front porch, making me happy when I see what I have grown.

But my neighbor deserves credit for figuring out what was wrong with my pumpkins. She told me I had to mate them. Yes. Mate. Male pollen sprinkled into female flower.

I told my dad, who is an old farmer–really, he raised lots of cantaloupes and lettuce on a big farm when I was little. He had a huge vegetable garden on our plot in town. (To give credit, my mother is an excellent gardener too.) He scoffed, guffawed (you know what I mean). Dad resistance.

“You don’t have to do that,” he said. “That’s baloney.”

“It’s true,” I said. “I read it on the Internet.”

More scoffing.

But I think so. All the bees are dying. If the bees die, they can’t fertilize your pumpkins. I told him this. I guess he admitted my point of view–but only slightly.

So once I studied those Internet pictures on male and female flowers on pumpkins (that’s it, I swear), I marched up my hill to the small planter I have on our “vista,” which sees nothing but treetops. I peered into one of the yellow blooms.

Buzzzzzzzzzz. Yikes. I jumped. Out flew a bee right at my nose. Okay, Dad, maybe you were right. This is hogwash.

But then I started looking for females. There were plenty of male flowers . In fact, too many. Not one female anywhere! The only female must have been fertilized by some miracle of survivor bee power. But now, it’s a locker room of manliness.

That’s why I have no baby pumpkins. I have only men flowers to mate. Who knows where the females, with their tiny pumpkin babies sitting at the stalk of their flowers, went or why they aren’t growing.

It makes me kinda sad.

Well, there’s always next year. That is the good thing about a garden. In a garden, you can always start over.

Sleeping Beauty Roses

07 Wednesday Oct 2009

Posted by ninagarden in gardening, roses

≈ 1 Comment

David Austin Roses

Since each of my entries has had a fairytale theme, I might as well keep it up. I love British things. I’m weird that way. I love British novels, poets, Boden, tea, vacations in the Lake District. So last year, when a garden editor came to photograph my garden for her magazine (I say this with glee, but nothing ever ran in print), I asked her about David Austin Roses. I had seen them somehow, somewhere, who knows why, and I loved them. But seeing as how they are from England, I did not think they would grow here in this hot coastal climate (where in my odd microclimate, it freezes in winter even though I am steps to the sea.) So she was very nice and a month later, I received a letter in the mail with recommendations for Austin Roses for hot climates. Yippee! I bought five–four for me and one, a Christmas gift to a gardening friend. Two were climbers that I planned to grow along the front wall and two weren’t.

I could write a lot about all these roses, how I planted them one afternoon when I had Strep throat, how I study them every day, and spray off every aphid, leaf cutter, sucker, mold and mildew while trying to stay organic (all these problems!) and I probably will tell you lots more later, but to spare you from boredom, I have to tell you that the climbers are scaring me. They are positively prehistoric. They are unstoppable. UGLY. THORNY. NO Blooms. But growing like those vines that kept the handsome prince from rescuing his sleeping beauty. Remember Maleficent? She could make some baaad flowers, dragons, too.

Oh once in a while I get a bloom…just enough to keep me loving them.

Many Austin roses have 99 petals or more on each bloom. They look like paper confections, they smell like myhrr. They are gangly and gorgeous. Yet these vines….how do I get them to bloom? Now that it is cool, I’m tempted to put Super Bloom on them even though I just put Grow Power. It isn’t working fast enough. I just want to force them to flower–all over my front wall. Pale pink papery floating blooms everywhere on those pink thorns and reddish vines with the tiny sharp green leaves–those vines must sprout out about two inches every day. They stick up into the sky or run over the Bower vine. (Do you think they will kill it?)

The David Austin Web site says as long as they are horizontal, they will keep growing. What mechanism inside the plant could determine that? Are they smart enough to know what I am thinking? Should I be scared?

These are the beasts.

Should I be ?

Terrible Tomatoes

09 Wednesday Sep 2009

Posted by ninagarden in gardening, rats, tomatoes, Uncategorized

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Terrible Tomatoes

Today I will tell you about the thing eating my tomatoes. I have nurtured these tomatoes along, watched them turn from yellow flowerets into big, green fruits. I waited patiently for them to turn red, the vine ripened type you rarely get to eat, and I waited with anticipation. Yet something curious happened. One day in the afternoon, I’d see my lovely green tomato. The next morning, instead of being a green turning to red shade, I discovered a giant bite smack dab in the middle of its green bellied flesh. This was an isolated incident I told myself. Each morning, I ran out before work to look at my garden. And each day, more bites. Then disappearances. A mystery that took me a few morning of head shaking. Something was eating my tomatoes!

One by one, whatever this thing is, it gorges itself on the flesh. It’s disgusting really. At first I thought I was out smarting it by leaving the half eaten carcass. If I did that, maybe it would slow it’s progression, but it doesn’t. Some nights, the thing eats two or three. I’ve started picking the tomatoes green so they can ripen. Forget vine ripened! I just want something to show for all the nurturing I’ve done. The terrible thing is the monstrous eater has moved now from the back tomato patch to the giant sprawling heirloom in the front yard–the one that has tomatoes as big as pumpkins. I can’t let it eat those beauties.

What is it? I guess a rat, maybe a ground squirrel. Bird net doesn’t stop it. A big Tom Cat rat trap did nothing. I’ve thought of poisoning my tomatoes like that witch in Snow White, but that seems so wrong.

Well, I’ll let you know what happens. Here is a picture of the gore. Here’s the green pumpkin tomatoes, too. 004

Cinderella Pumpkin

08 Tuesday Sep 2009

Posted by ninagarden in gardening, glitter, pumpkins

≈ 1 Comment

093 Welcome to my garden blog. I have some problems with my pumpkin patch. I’ve never grown pumpkins before and living in San Diego, I probably planted them the wrong time of year, but I did. Now (September) I have one glorious pumpkin, and all the rest have blooms–some are dead or dying after blooming, but I have no other little pumpkins even though I stare at them every day.