Hokkaido, zucchini, marrow, and pattypans do not look promising, although I should get some, at least of the last sort. The butternut squashes, on the other hand, have grown like mad, and they were completely unaffected by the slugs. And today…
© Charly, all rights reserved. Click for full size.
© Charly, all rights reserved. Click for full size.
… I got the first three female flowers. I hope my attempts at manual pollination worked, because unfortunately, there weren’t very many male flowers open at the same time, and some were already closing.
However, this is really promising. I got the first female flower full seven weeks earlier than last year, so even if we get the first frost at the average time (end of September), I could look at a substantial amount of fully ripe fruit. I do not want to get my hopes up; that’s usually a surefire recipe for disappointment, but there are plenty more buds in the making and the vines are still growing in length by about 5-10 cm a day, with some reaching the very top of the trellises already.
I only wish the loofahs were flowering too. They are not; the vines still only grow in length, even though they have reached the roof of the greenhouse already.
One of my two watermelon plants already has a developing fruit, but the plant itself isn’t growing too well so we’ll see what happens.
The other plant is growing better, but not currently making any female flowers. There were a few earlier, and I wasn’t quick enough to hand-pollinate any of them.
Two of the half dozen tomato plants are growing well. First fruits should ripen in August.
I first read pattypans as partypants.
The best of luck with all your gardening!
@lumipuna, I never had luck with either watermelons or cantaloupes. The seeds either did not germinate at all, or if they did, the plants remained tiny and sickly the whole year and never produced a single flower. I am surprised that you have any plants at all so far up north.
@Ice Swimmer, that misreading did give me a chuckle.