Shoots and leaves...
The whims and woes, highs and lows, of trying to grow fruit and veg in Nordic latitudes.
The aubergines are getting quite big so Peter put a frame around the egg plant box to support them. I've been misting them which is supposed to fix the pollination (or something like that). The plants are very bushy and covered in purple flowers which are being pollinated partly by the wild bees and partly by me. Found fruits on the Squashkins at last. I'm guessing that these "embryonic" fruits are yet to be fertilized as the flowers are tightly shut. Most of the pollination seems to be the work of wild bees. The coriander flowers attract all kinds of wild "bumble bees" and I've watched them at work in the squash plants. The bees will wriggle their way into flowers that are quite tightly shut where they spend several minutes moving around and sucking nectar. I have waited with my camera at the ready, crouching among the foliage, wondering if they will ever re-appear. The bees are completely hidden inside the flowers and take forever before moving onto the next flower.
I am picking 4-5 cucumbers every day and each one is perfect. Saladin is definitely my favourite variety: very reliable and the taste is good too and there are not too many seeds inside. The rocket is through. I abandoned my attempts at growing rocket in the vegetable garden and now have it in a raised bed in the polytunnel under some net curtains (which I believe came from our house in Budapest!). They germinated really quickly and there are no signs of bugs puncturing the leaves.
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July 2020
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