Greetings! Here I am for my weekly garden update. I have a lot of new things to share with you all but unfortunately not all of it is good sweatdrop I would be lying if I said this past week hasn't been hard on me and the pumpkin patch.
I'll start off by first telling you about the good news.
My jack o' lantern pumpkin, which was the very first pumpkin I pollinated, is doing great. I can't believe how quickly it's growing every day. It gives me hope that I'll have at least one pumpkin to carve in time for Halloween.
I pollinated a fairytale pumpkin a couple days ago and a lumina pumpkin yesterday morning. I have high hopes that the fairytale accepted the pollen because it nearly doubled in size over night. That's a very good sign whee I can't tell if the lumina has grown at all since yesterday. I'll be checking on it daily to see how it's looking. I really hope it doesn't end up dying emotion_8c
Fairytale:
Lumina:
I've been pollinating a bunch of gourds lately from my biggest plant, but so far only one gourd seems to be making progress. I don't know why none of the other gourds seem to be growing but I'm not too worried about it since that plant produces male and female flowers daily.
Unfortunately, one of my acorn squash has shriveled up and is at death's door. I don't know why this happened but I'm guessing the plant couldn't support both of the squashes being so close together or the heat got to it. I'm bummed about it but at least the big one seems to still be doing good.
The Bad News emotion_skull
The first and most frustrating problem I want to address is the female buds shriveling up and dying before the flowers get a chance to open up. This first started happening to my acorn squash but quickly started happening to everything except the gourds. It's only happening to the female buds specifically which I find odd and super annoying stressed I've scoured the internet for an answer as to why this is happening but there seems to be no definitive answer. It seems that every single place you look has a different answer as to what they think the problem is.
Based on what I have read, I believe this is happening for one of two reasons. Either the plants are not mature enough to start bearing fruit and need more time before the females successfully bloom, or the extreme heat is causing stress to the plants and resulting in the blossom rot. There isn't much I can do to fix this issue since there is no way for me to even find out what is causing it. For now I'm just monitoring the immature buds and pollinating the few that do live long enough to bloom.
The next thing I want to talk about is the persistent aphid problem. I've been spraying my plants as thoroughly as I can once a week but it's almost too much for me to deal with on my own. Spraying every single leaf on every single plant in 80+ degree weather is just too exhausting for me. And the b**tards always end up coming back anyway emotion_donotwant
I'm considering buying live ladybugs from amazon and releasing them into my garden to help battle the damn things. I've been seeing a lot more ladybugs and their babies in the garden lately but I need hundreds if not thousands more to cut down on aphid numbers. I could also try using a neem oil spray on the plants but I'm honestly getting fed up with spraying. I'll let ya'll know when I decide on a plan of attack.
That's all I've got for today. I hope you come back next week for more updates. Thank you and enjoy the rest of your week 3nodding
