Progress In my sisters Garden

Hey All! My sisters garden is doing pretty good. So far we are having about a 78% success rate. I will highlight a few of the things that are of interest today.

Above you can see the cantaloupe . It is still small, but growing everyday. I do believe I saw a bud on it a while ago, but I picked it off to force the plant to focus on getting bigger before it starts fruiting. As with most plants, once it starts to fruit all other aspects of growth will take second place with the growth of the fruit taking most of the nutrients. As wtih all the other plants in my sisters garden they have been active long enough that I need to apply the second application of fertilizer.

As it grows the weather is getting warmer, which is a great plus for this type of plant. They love the heat, as long as they have enough water.

 Next in line Is my Basil. When I planted it in my sisters garden it had lived inside her house for a good few weeks, and had been a steady supply of basil leaves. yummy! But as with most plants that are treated as a baby and allowed to be in a very steady climate (inside her house) then moved outside and planted without warning, it has died back quite a bit from the shock. I even used a transplant fluid on it to lessen the shock. That is probably the only saving grace it has received.

In the background you can see the watermelon doing poorly as well. But

 The only tomato plant that is doing well is the Early Girl.
This saddens me, I am not really sure why only 1 of the 4 plants are doing well. It might be due to the weather, it might also be that the soil is too clay-ey . Once this growing season is over I need to put a WHOLE BUNCH of top soil into that garden. I think it's lacking in nutrients.

The Fruit of my harvest! a single tomato! I'm sure I have more , but they are too small to find. I'll go back soon and take another look!

Navel Orange Tree update!

Here is my orange tree again! I got this little fellow last year about this time. So I have had this fancy little tree for just about a year now, and I have documented most of the things that have gone wrong with it. It has had a lack of iron/zinc resulting in yellowing leaves, and then the support bamboo pole snaped so it had to support itself. Well now we have another probem! I found HOLES in a few of the leaves! What a terrible sight!

As you can see it looks like something chewed its way through this leaf.

Really this is not that bad. The leaf itself will survive and the tree as a whole will not suffer.

I put the better picture up on top, these are kinda fuzzy and focusing on the pot below. But you can still get different angles, which are nice.

My guess as to what made these holes is that it's one of a few different insects. My first guess is a Carpenter Bee. These guys are great, and do not harm your plants very much. Actually they do more good then bad because they pollinate even during light rain. My second guess is a bird, for it's nest or something, then the third is a caterpillar, but because I did not see any such thing on my tree I think I'm safe... for now!

The thing that makes me most happy is that I might actually get a couple pieces of fruit off this fancy little tree this year! Above right picture is three of about 15 oranges that seem as though they may develop into full on oranges!

The pictures above you can see the leaves are almost fully recovered from that little bout with the coffee I applied. and the leaves are mostly only yellow towards the tips of the tree. It's still in recovery, but well on its way to becoming full on healthy! Next week I will add some Fruit Tree Fertilizer.

Thanks for reading everybody! Come back next time to see how my fancy orange tree is doing!

My SunFlowers DIED!

Do you guy recall I was growing sunflowers in an egg carton? Well, things were going great! they were getting nice and big, almost all of them sprouted. I had about a 95% success rate on the seed germination. That is great! usually the most you can hope for is like 90% possibly 85% . Just because they are not all live seeds, or they were grown wrong. But I got a really high % rate of growth.




But then I decided to go on vacation, and I completely forgot about them. Recently it has rained here in North California, rain is not strange , it's the time of year. Just last week we got a good couple days of rain, and I did not have to water anything. So that got my mind off my sunflowers. Thus I went on vacation with out even thinking about them. I come back and they look terrible...

Ever last one of my pretty pretty sprouts has shriveled up in the sun and died! A lack of water can do that you know?

 You can see that ALL my sprouts are dead because I did not water them, and that makes me sad.

Poor guys! Oh well I guess. It's a learning experience. I will try again, there is still time this year. I will just have to re plant and hope for the best. The good thing for my next batch of plants is that I wont have any more vacation time, so they will not be forgotten!

Alright Yeall! thanks for the reads as usual! and keep coming back for another update on my fancy garden!