Cucumber (burpless) Harvest #1

Three months after sowing my cucumber (burpless), it was time to pick four off the vines. It was a very satisfying moment for me. I have pickled the fourth one before snapping a picture. Here's the other three, all about 30cm long :

Coriander, Yellow Capsicum, Cucumber (burpless)

I have forgotten about the coriander seeds which I had sown around my turkey fig tree...When they emerged, I realised it was them : My yellow capsicum plants is bearing more fruits. Never bored of snapping a picture of them...always so pretty :

How fast are the cucumbers growing! Here's #1 :

Here's #2 :

Here's #3 :

Here's #4 hanging upside down :

Tender Loving Care is Important.

A gardener must pay close attention to her plants. And I love spending time just doing that - lots of attention...lots of tender loving care. When this is done, I can make sure I prevent lots of bad things from happening. Close observation of a cluster of strawberry delight flowers (even though the pot is netted) shows that some caterpillar activity. The flowers and buds were kind of white-webbed together and upon peeling them open, two caterpillars were found. After squashing them, I had to remove some buds and flowers as they were already damaged by them :

I have since propagated five pots of strawberry delight plants :

My second try at planting Thai basil from nursery purchase is not looking so good. Leaf edges turning brown. I wonder why :

Worrying about the cucumber pollination was unduly indeed. Actually bumble bees do visit the flowers. How wonderful! I have at least five developing cucumbers and they are growing fast :

My yellow capsicum (officially calling it yellow after the green ones ripened to yellow recently) plant is making more flowers and fruits after some of their lower older leaves fell off :

I had to remove some little fruits and lower suckers as I did not want so many fruits. I want larger fewer fruits :

Chilli Padi plants are growing taller and flowering more but still having blotchy spots on their leaves :

Harvested some mint for omelette from the recently propagated mint :

Harvested three calamondin comquat limes and purple king beans :

Passionfruit Panama Gold is putting on new young shoots well here. Good thing I dug it up and potted it :

This is the spot I am going to plant it. Now working on it :

Cool weather change and some intermittent drizzle this morning. I did 2 hours of work. Applied large pots with sugarcane mulch, added water crystals to some pots which tend to dry up fast, applied more organic fertiliser to some pots and planted out my buk choys. Time to harvest the two ripened yellow capsicums for beef tonight : Purple king beans are growing on the vines :

Tomato (silvery fir) growing bigger and more by the day :

These are buk choys...normal ones from my shepherd and purple ones from Diggers :

I had some planted in Patch B (where snowpeas used to be), between the bitter melon on the left and cucumber (burpless) on the right :

They are each protected by this plastic punnet which I keep after eating supermarket vege/fruits :

A light plastic punnet will get a rock resting on it :

4 other buk choys are planted here in planters, making it a total of 8 :

The cucumber (burpless) are producing baby cucumbers but I suspect the female flowers attached to the ends of them are not even opened yet. Must continue to observe :

The vines are a pretty sight at the moment and I managed to protect them under a piece of white cloth pegged on the trellis :

Lots of male flowers :

The eggplant supreme has two large purple (my son said violet) flowers opened. Very pretty! :

It started to really pour from noon onwards and last through the evening. I love the rain!!! My son said if I kept saying that, it was going to flood.

Yellow Capsicum, Cucumber Burpless & Strawberry Delight

Tomorrow's weather is going to be really hot and windy, 39 deg cel. I have already put up most of the white cloth I have. I cannot cover the whole garden and only can do so for as many plants as I can. Here seems to be a baby cucumber (burpless). I have two on the vines : My beautiful to look at Strawberry Delight has produced a fair number of strawberries. Here's some more to be harvested :

Yellow Capsicums are ripening on the plant. So beautiful :

Summer...What's Happening in the Garden?

It's my second summer doing gardening. I welcomed some good rainfall on Tuesday and it is showering a little again today. Samuel and I found a ladybird on one of the chilli padi plants. I am not sure if that is the one I rescued from Coles supermarket few weeks back. It could well be. It seems comfortable on the plant and then I realised that there were actually aphids on the underside of some leaves. Good fellow..hope you have a great feast and get rid of them!

All my five calendula plants are doing great, flowering. Also some withered flowers have already produced seeds.

The two common mint cuttings took off fantastic and are growing fatter each day.

One nasturtium seedling emerged.

One strawberry delight runner growing into a new strawberry plant after I buried it in a small pot of mix. This way, I can keep having new plants without having to buy them. More runners developing from the mother plant.

A baby cucumber emerged from the vine. Several male flowers also have bloomed. I am trying to expose the two cucumber vines to buzzing bees for pollination as they are quite obscured by the pots and netting.

Another capsicum ripening to a bright orange. The smaller ones are ripening first. The two larger capsicums will get to grow larger before ripening. Cannot wait to snap a picture of that happening soon! Meanwhile more capsicum flowers are developing.

My purple king bean plants are also producing flowers.

And a baby purple king bean too!

Strawberry delight...yum...I harvested them before the earwigs did.

All three tomato silvery fir plants are doing great and putting on fruits. I had to prune off a lot of leaves to allow better air circulation.

I hammered a nail on top of the fence and used a string to secure the trellis for the bitter melon and cucumber (burpless). In summer during heatwaves, the wind can be extremely strong.

Also mulched the cucumber vines and bitter melon vine with sugar cane mulch.

Between the bitter melon and cucumber vines, I am preparing the soil for my buk choy and silver beet. Not a lot of space but I will try to squeeze in space for some leafy vege.

Buk choy seedlings waiting to be transplanted.

Purple buk choy seedlings.