What's Growin' On

I just realized I'm a day behind when I said I'd provide you some detailed pictures to go along with my video garden tour... Oops!

With the heat consistently hitting the 90's the past few weeks, production is really starting to pick up. I can't wait to share my largest summer harvest so far with you--but that's not until Monday. ;-) For now, here are a few close ups of what's growin' on...

My lone Isabella Charantais melon so far from three in-ground plants...

7/13

7/17

Below Three Isabella's in the 18 gallon SWP. Production and plant growth are far better in the SWP. I plan on making another one next year, and will skip growing them in-ground.

7/13

The two on the left...

7/13

7/17

Below One of three Baby Belle plants growing in SWPs. They're a lot smaller than Renee's Garden shows them. I wonder if it's because of the small containers (3 gallons of soil), or if it's because I started too early. The third plant was started a few weeks after the first two, and is taller, less leafy, and just now starting to flower. I'm looking forward to comparing the production results.

7/13

A pepper at the top of the above plant, yesterday.

...and this morning...

Below Bush Slicer Cukes in 2 SWP's. The plant growth has been great, but the plants are having problems with producing both male and female flowers at the same time. Since I'm using a paint brush to hand pollinate, I've been collecting as much pollen as I can, and trying to distribute two or three days later when the female flowers appear. I'm losing more females than I'm able to pollinate at this point.

7/13

7/16

Below A lot of the green green beans in the raised bed with only beans are curling, and the non-curling beans are slow to produce. I had this problem growing green green beans last year, so I will probably stick with yellow and purple beans next year...

I've pulled most of the green green bean plants growing in the very front of the bed due to small size and low to no production, and reseeded with Purple Queen. The pulled plants were started in newspaper pots and placed in-ground in the pots, and had very little root growth outside the pots.

Below I have about 12 Purple Queen plants in front of my in-ground melons, and they all look like this. Well, actually, one of them is a green green bean plant (how'd that happen? lol)--see it behind the Purple Queen? It's producing ok too...

Below Here are the two Bush King acorn squash. Notice the size difference between the two?The plant on the left has a squash already, but it's just stalled in growth and flower output. I really don't know what's wrong with it since I'm treating both of them the same. Could it be because of the squash growing on it?

The plant on the right will have it's first female bloom in the next few days.

Since I'm having the same issues with male and female flowers not showing themselves at the same time, I already have pollen collected...

Hope you enjoyed! If anyone has any ideas on what may be wrong with my acorn squash, please let me know! I'm heading over to GardenWeb to see if someone can help me...