My pictures may be a little out of order with the dates, but I will share some pictures anyways.
July 13th
I hand-pollinated the first blossom-bagged female flower of Spaghetti Squash a while back, with one of the male flowers I plucked off, and it is maturing into a spaghetti squash.
- Developing Spagetti Squash female flower
- Growing Spagetti Squash female flower.jpg (128.67 KiB) Viewed 10361 times
- Pollinated Spagetti Squash, after blossom died
- Pollinated Spagetti Squash, with brown string.jpg (108.79 KiB) Viewed 10361 times
I thinned out a few more sunflower plants, and/or stripped off some of their lower leaves, to give my few corn plants some more sunlight.
I finally figured out that these ball-shaped things are what the flax seeds develop in. When I opened one up, they were filled with flax seeds, but the seeds were entirely white instead of dark brown like the ones I had sown.
- Flax with seedpods top view
- Flax producing seed heads.png (431.93 KiB) Viewed 10361 times
- Flax with seedpods side view
- Side vew flax seed heads resized.jpg (138.25 KiB) Viewed 10361 times
- First small bundle of flax. Too soon to harvest?
- Very small flax bundle resized.jpg (131.38 KiB) Viewed 10361 times
Although possibly too early in hindsight to harvest for the flax fibers, I thinned out the flax plants I didn't want to go to seed. I pulled out the shorter flax plants, even though most were probably shorter due to location in more shade rather than genetics. I wouldn't be surprised if the short flax plants were not matured enough in fibers, but I plan to 'play around' with them anyways to see how their fibers turn out, if at all.
I basically pulled out the flax, roots and all, tied them up into a bundle and hung the bundle to hopefully dry out.
July 20th
The one corn plant is about full size now. I hadn't gotten around to hilling any of the corn plants yet, I might just let them go without hilling again this year.
Only some of the 1/2 Runner beans appeared to have sprouted, but the ones that did are doing well so far.
The Spaghetti Squash are beginning to sprawl out, but one is particularly vigorous. I'm not doing a good job of keeping up with pollinating female blooms of the ones on the trellis, but I definitely have one squash maturing.
- Planted Spagetti Squash sprawling out on ground
- Spagetti Squash on 'cattle panel' trellis
- Developing Spagetti Squash.jpg (156.77 KiB) Viewed 10361 times
The morning glories are blooming well.
- Morning Glory (a pretty weed) trained & climbing up sunflower stalk
- Morning Glory on sunflower stalk resized.jpg (164.7 KiB) Viewed 10361 times
Some of the Wando pea plants are dying now, presumably because of the high temperatures finally 'kicking in'.
I pulled all but one of said dying pea plants, the remaining dead one has a few nice pea pods on it. Normally I don't bother pulling out dead pea plants, but I want to attempt to save the best plants to go to seed.
For some reason some of the pea pods are 'bumpy' (stippling?) from some of the plants, I'm not sure whether it is from insect damage or not, but the peas still look and tasted fine.
July 23rd
My first planted and best single Country Gentleman sweet corn is both tasseling and has silks.
- Single Country Gentleman Sweet Corn plant with tassels and silks
- Single Country Gentleman Corn tasseling and silking.jpg (145.87 KiB) Viewed 10361 times
The Half Runner Beans are growing, I was able to just start training a few of them up the trellis.
- 1/2 Runner Beans on trellis, and planted Spagetti Squash sprawling out on ground
- Half Runner Beans at trellis and Spagetti Squash.jpg (166.17 KiB) Viewed 10361 times
The transplanted Spagetti Squash plants have two squash developing so far, but I haven't been able to successfully time/coordinate the male flowers to pollinate the female flowers, so some of the female flowers are dying.
All three of the planted Spagetti Squash are 'sprawling out' over the ground.
Some of the 'mutt' volunteer sunflowers are 'branching out', especially the ones that have multiple flower heads.
- 'Mutt' volunteer sunflower, with multiple flower heads forming
- Sunflower in bloom resized.jpg (155.26 KiB) Viewed 10361 times
I am leaving my remaining Wando peas to go to seed, or at least attempting to.
I am finally caught up on tying up the Sweet 100 cherry tomato plant. It was very leggy and tall, especially when stretched upright, yet very healthy. My guess is it is leggy due to attempting to find sunlight, in the shade of the sunflower plants.
I stripped off some of the leaves off of some of my sunflower plants, to encourage more sunlight to reach the tomato plant.
- Finally tied up leggy tomato plant again
- Sweet 100 Cherry Tomato plant tied up again.jpg (189.86 KiB) Viewed 10361 times
- Sweet 100 red Cherry Tomatoes starting to ripen
- First Sweet 100 Cherry tomatoes to ripen.jpg (152.13 KiB) Viewed 10361 times
The flax looked a little wind-blown, but intact. The thunderstorm the other day had a wind of at least 23 miles per hour, but it is not what I consider to be a strong wind for this area from my experience. It was probably unnecessary, but I babied the little flax patch by tying up the flax perimeter a bit anyways.
- Slightly windblown flax
- Slightly windblown flax.png (562.2 KiB) Viewed 10361 times
- Tied up the perimeter of flax abit
- Babied the flax.jpg (195.02 KiB) Viewed 10361 times
The soapwart patch visually looks like a mess, with plants partly flattened, but perhaps also because the outermost plants were previously 'trimmed' by the lawnmower a bit. The soapwart plants are healthy though, so I'm not worried about them.