KayJay's Garden, 2019

[kayjay]

Hi VanIsle. I did that a couple of years ago with my solo cabbage plant and it worked - I got three new little heads.

A few notes:
- The weather turned really nice, and the plants that get the most light are making up for lost time. I’ll take some pics and compare them to previous years to see where they’re at.
- There were lots of bumblebees around when the lilac trees were blooming, but I haven’t seen any since. I hope I’m just missing them; I haven’t spent as much time outside. I can pollinate the zukes by hand, but I can barely reach the cukes and would appreciate some bee help.
- The pumpkin flowered the other day. Today, there were two flowers. It’s about 2/3 of the way up the fence.
- I’m going to have two zukes this week, but man, are they tiny. I’ll give them a good watering tonight and maybe they’ll still fill out.
- The peppers are doing okay, not great because of their slow start, I assume. The mini bells are doing the best.

[TomatoNut95]

Perhaps if you were to plant some bee-attracting flowers near your garden, it would help the bees find their way to your garden. I've noticed a lack of bees in my area to. Haven't seen a single honeybee lately. Mostly butterflies and a few carpenter bees.

[kayjay]

Hi 'Maternut! I might try to get some potted flowers for next year... I don't really have any more space. I'm hoping more bumblebees return next year to the lilac tree. They LOVE that.

I'm in the city, so I've hardly seen any honeybees here. I saw some sweat bees over the last few years.

So here's what I think happened: there's a Facebook group for my townhouse complex, and a neighbor had them nesting in her yard. Her 6-MO son was stung. She was asking about how to eradicate them. That was a few weeks ago. Now they're gone.

I wish I would have known; I would have made sure I hand-pollinated. Now I've got a bunch of dead female cucumber and zucchini flowers.

Meh. In other news, I tried the glue experiment on my pepper flowers. We'll see how that goes.

[TomatoNut95]

I have never heard of gluing flowers. I hand-polinated a summer squash once... the immature fruit grew a little, then died.

How sad. Instead of that woman removing the bees, she should've taught her son not to play near bee hives. I don't know what happened to ours....I know we had a couple of hives in the woods nearby. I've seen a couple of carpenter bees, and that's about it.

[kayjay]

She claims it was her 6-month-old baby, but she has an older child, too, and I have a really hard time believing that a freaking BUMBLEBEE just decided to sting a baby for no reason. You have to try pretty hard to annoy them that much.

I wish I could just buy them like you can buy ladybugs. Heh heh.

[applestar]

Apparently you can. They sell the hive/box for pollinating commercial greenhouses and closed tunnels.

...funny/coincidence — I was just looking it up last night here’s a picture of a box, though I’m sure there are other sources —


https://www.koppertus.com/content/_proc ... fc722d.jpg

[applestar]

It’s a tough call — even I would show no mercy to anything that stung my baby.

...hmm... I was hoping I saved the story I made up as a bedtime story for my DD when that bee head butted her, but I can’t find it ...oh well, here’s the background story even though this might be OT — some good info about bees, wasps, and bee stings in that thread :

Subject: bee stings and keeping them away
May 05, 2013

I believe there are aggressive bees (and wasps) and not so aggressive ones. The little beneficial wasps are not, bumblebees are usually not. I once accidentally dropped a large drapery -- actually Japanese carp windsock (so appropriate that today is Children's Day in Japan when they are displayed HAPPY CHILDREN'S DAY ) from upstairs window into the shrubbery below, startling a bumblebee. It zoomed away and directly hit my then toddler daughter who was watching from below on the ground in the forehead... But it didn't sting her even then.

The yellow jackets that were nesting on my driveway attacked if anyone came within three feet, and a couple of family members were stung within one foot of the nest until I cordoned the area off.

I was stung by a paper wasp when I lost my balance while picking raspberries and slapped my hand right next to a hive on a fence. But they don't bother me while working in the garden when they are patrolling the cabbages and broccoli or scraping the bamboo for making their nest.

When I wade through the honeybees, bumblebees, other bees and wasps in the lawn, some of them get buzzy and zoom around me a couple of times, but they break off and get back to work if I just keep walking. I *think* it's a matter of them getting used to me because it's just early in the season. I've picked mint while they are in full bloom (and swarming with over a dozen different kinds of bees and wasps) and don't remember them ever getting upset.

I've had cicada killers (they're over 2 inches long) zoom past me or capture a cicada over my head and drop in front of me and they paid no attention to me whatsoever -- they are too preoccupied by their hunt.

[TomatoNut95]

The carpenter bees around here are quite sweet. They'll attack each other or other insects if they cross territories, but they don't attack me. I have stroked them in the past with my bare finger and they show no aggression whatsoever.

I was stung by yellow jack once in the joint of my finger. Couldn't bend my finger for days. Not to mention it was quite painful.

Wasps are my hugest fear. They're very abundant around here. I call them little red demons or devils because they're so aggressive and scary. I'm am fortunate to have never been stung,(and plan to keep a perfect record) but I have feared them horribly since I was little; I will run from them if I'm not armed with a swatting object. I have family members that think I'm weird for being so scared of them, but for their information, I am not the only adult who is terrified of them. Had a woman tell me that her husband will run from them, but yet they don't bother her.....I guess he has to hide behind her for protection.

[kayjay]

Thanks for the insight, folks. Applestar, I looked into getting bumblebees locally, and came up with nothing - but that company is located not far from me! Very cool. Hopefully, I won’t need them - I went out in the yard today, and was pleased to see three different kind of bees! A bumblebee was back, and I think a honeybee and a sweat bee, but I couldn’t get a good look because they were moving so quickly. They were definitely two different sizes, and I’m pretty sure I saw the metallic green sheen on the smaller bee.

TomatoNut, that’s how I am with wasps, too! I will scream and run like a little girl.

———

Other stuff:
- I got a ripe banana pepper, and there are a couple of nearly-ripe Hot Portugals
- There are about 8 jalapeños I can grab. Maybe I’ll make poppers later in the week when it cools off.
- My huge Brandywine fell over, because I procrastinated on tying it up better. Whoops.
- My opo squash... isn’t. The flowers are yellow. They’re supposed to be white. I’ll be interested to see what they turn into. It looks more like the zucchini plants.

[applestar]

Hmm — opo “squash” is really a gourd right? Luffah “gourds” have yellow blossoms, so they still might be another kind of gourd ....

Squash (as in cucurbita) and gourd have distinctly different looking blossoms even among their own different species.

— maybe post some photos?

[kayjay]

Hi Applestar. You're correct, opo is also known as bottle gourds.

This is what the seeds are supposed to look like:

opo.jpg (8.73 KiB) Viewed 13445 times

These are the so-called Opo seeds I got, along side my zucchini seeds for comparison:

zukeseeds.jpg (41.7 KiB) Viewed 13445 times

Here's what Opo flowers are supposed to look like:

opo-flower.jpg (7.33 KiB) Viewed 13445 times

...and here's what I've got:

2019-08-05-grey-zuke.jpg (46.71 KiB) Viewed 13445 times

In that pic, you can see an emerging female, a male flower, and the first growing fruit. It's about the size of my thumb right now. It looks like the grey zucchini they sell at my grocery store.

This IS still a cool variety of zucchini squash, though. It's growing far taller than my usual bushy zucchini. This will come in handy next year - I'll try it again for sure. It got off to a poor start this year because it was surrounded by tall tomatoes and a tree that blocked too much of its light.

[TomatoNut95]

Nice! I wish I could grow squash in my raised bed, but it won't fit. Too bad there's no such thing as dwarf squash or zucchini!

I've wanted to grow a luffa squash, peel it and use it for a sponge.