The newby

I have a squash! six thousand squash blossoms later, I have a squash. In my reading I learned that in some varieties the plant will produce 25 male blossoms for every one female flower produced, which gives me comfort that it isn't just me, I was afraid it was, I was afraid I had done something to my plants to alter them in some way or I had bought a whole flat of male flowers and should have known to also buy a flat of female flowers at the same time and that made me mad at the people who sold them to me because why didn't they say anything to me? They saw me wandering away with all those male plants! And they said Lets to haze the garden newby!

 It didn't help that I started doing reading and learned that there are plants that really are strictly male or strictly female and that it would be possible to get hosed like that. The book promised if the variety was like that the flat would be sold with both genders of plants. Trusting fools. I mean, my plants are lush and green and the flowers are pretty if you are out and about early enough in the morning to see them and I could conceivably see squash plants as being quite adequate ground cover but damn it, I want to see the produce aisle from Whole Foods in my back yard! Merely being green and pretty doesn't cut it in the Dianaverse.

The book did say that many plants today have been engineered to produce both kinds of flowers and many don't even need any outside help with pollination, a good thing because the bees aren't around to do it for them. My squash need the bees though. I may have found a second female flower on one of my squash plants and in their absents I am so going to artificially pollinate that flower. I feel bad for my squash plants. I had to do some thinning a couple of weeks ago and the main victims were three undersized squash plants that weren't thriving and were getting in the way of my cucumbers that thriving and producing. It wasn't a hard decision. I had one sad little squash plant that seemed to only serve as a host for tendrils of a lovely, but pushy, volunteer morning glory that I am trying to train to grow on the little barrier fence that helps keep the garden in place. Of course the morning glories I planted where it would be more convenient to have lovely vining plants, never came up.

My cucumbers are perking along. Of my three cucumbers, one is growing very well. The two others, I think may need more sun then they are getting, The robust specimen is on a vine that is climbing my fence and it's really doing well, the others are more terrestrial and while they are both older veggies, they are smaller and aren't growing as fast.

Now that everything that is going to grow is growing and has reached its adult state, I haven't had to poison in a weeks but early on when my tiny plants were still tender and alluring, they were getting chewed voraciously. I felt personally violated - Those beasties weren't just chewing on shoots and leaves, they were chewing on me. My very fingers and toes were being munched on! It had to stop. So I poisoned the hell out of them. The first tomatoes I washed three times, the collards went through multiple washing and rinsing cycles before I felt comfortable eating them but it was worth it though because no one else had eaten them before I had a chance to.

Speaking of collards. I babied them, watched them, coaxed growth out of them. I talked with them, visited with them daily and I still didn't like them. And I tried! I put them into a dish I really enjoy and I got all excited and they stilled tasted like collards. Blech. I had thought that after putting all that work into them they would taste like something I do like, like pizza or cheetoes. I guess I had hoped to have more influence over them. I had thought that they would take after the tomatoes, another food I don't usually like. The tomatoes tasted really good, I could almost forget they were tomatoes. They were almost cheeto-like. I don't eat peppers either, but if they ever actually produce I'm going to stuff them with ground beef and force them into being edible. It's a big if though, if they ever produce anything I'll probably end up being so excited that I won't even eat them, I'll have them bronzed instead.