Mystery Plant part Deux

and once again the garden is full of surprises, notably this one:

No seriously, what is this?

And not only is there another mystery plant, she is living WITH the other mystery plants.  (in fact I think I spied a 3rd mystery plant in that corner but I just CANT with that right now). So while I still try to figure out my first mystery (no news on that front as of yet) we are on to M-2 as I like to call her.

And clearly she's a girl, she has bells, one of the first things I noticed as I attempted my sleuthing.  Here's a shot:

It's a little blurry but those bells seem to house the flowers.  The flowers are pretty, similar to okra in shape and with a small dark center.  They only stay open for a day or so.

 and have a beautiful "star" shape when they first open.


Now google images has gotten me some BEAUTIFUL yellow flowered plants but nothing quite like this. It has grown much faster than M-1 but there is only one of them, hopefully she can self pollinate and I will get to learn what this is.  I have no weeds like her in the garden and so I must have planted her. I tried a leaf-not good- (and probably a habit I should stop).

Savers: Lettuce Edition

A tutorial to Collect Lettuce Seeds.

I was really confused about when to harvest seeds and how to keep track of the various stages of the budding/pollinating/maturing of the pods so here is a handy guide of how I learned to identify each stage.

After a season of Lettuce the plants sends up a long stalk, all along the stalk are small buds like this:

 See how most are "tight" buds and a light green? That means they are baby buds and not ready.  The seeds will eventually be at the bottom of each "bud".

Watch and wait and suddenly you will notice some of the buds have blossomed into small yellow flowers like This:

If you watch closely in a day you will notice the yellow flower "close up" 

Small closed yellow flowers

The flower bud will start to dry out and the yellow flower turns white and fuzzy.  This lets you know it was pollinated. 

See how green this bud is? Also it is not a
"fuzzy" white, that means it has not yet
turned into a yellow flower or been pollinated
it is still a baby bud

This one is drying; you see more white
and the white is "fuzzy" also the bud is lighter
this one has turned into a yellow flower and
then pollinated.

READY!

He is ready! see how the bud is brown and dry? If you look really close under the white fuzz you can see some of the seeds. I simply pinch the white fluff and pull out the seeds then drop them into a ziploc bag.

READY!

The seeds! the white fluff is in my finger.  and I have a fingerfull of seeds.  Each plant makes several buds and each bud makes a decent number of seeds.  Next thing you know you could have enough seed to grow another garden!

Aphids part Three

They are coming!!! I can not get a handle on these guys. This is my summer squash that has already beat one round with the aphids.  I have left it alone but after dousing the armenian cucumber and the regular cucumber this guy got hit again.  I do not think the tomato spray did much, it just moved the suckers. So I am not going that route again.  This time I have strategically placed some Banana peels under the plant. It has been suggested that the ethylene/ethene gas might ward them off. I do not want to kill  them but I just want them to not kill anything else. If you notice the baby squash plant is growing crooked because of those gross buggies.

Sunflower

Awww, sunflowers.  What could be more "summer". These hot loving plants are supposed to attract birds who also eat bugs. They also attract bees to increase pollination. They also make delicious seeds.  But notice anything unusual about these guys?

yup, that is not a camera trick, those are TINY sunflowers.  I hijacked some seeds from a beautiful GIANT sunflower at my local community garden....seems that they are not true to parent. Turns out a little research clarified this problem

"Sunflowers will cross-pollinate and must be separated by ½ mile to ensure pure seed. Harvest the heads when they have completely filled out, lost all of their petals and the backs begin to turn brown."

Oops, That garden had a HUGE variety of sunflowers within a 1/2 mile by 1/2 mile plot.  I will follow these guys a little longer and maybe I  will still get some teeny tiny snacks out of the deal.  

Savers

To try to save some money I have begun to harvest some of my seeds. This way I can spend the money on other things like shoes  trellises (trellisi?). So here is my step by step to saving Zinnia Seeds.

 These are the first "productive" flowers I have been able to grow other than some native plants. This guy is HUGE and much bigger than I expected so he has provided some lovely shade to my poor butternut squash (more on that in weather issues).  I see tons of bugs hanging out around him, He has been bit a few times but seems to survive the occasional munch.

1. Pick a beautiful specimen-one you hope to repeat next
year.  This guy has a beautiful pink shade and he
is opening in a somewhat uniform manner-see that guy
in the back corner? too unruly

2. Let him dry til he needs some
Cetaphil. You know he is ready
When you pull a petal out and a
little arrow is attached.

(Those little pointy arrows circled in green are the seeds
they are attached to the petals)

3. Give him a good haircut. Cut as close to the
"center" part (which is hard) as you can, all that
extra petal is not necessary.

4. Pull off the seeds, these are really the bottoms of the petal
so what you have left is a pile of seeds/petal butts, and the
rest of the flower center-I don't know what it is called.
the petals should pull of easily, just rub your thumb over them
or gently pull them out.

 They needed to dry some more so I put them in an origami box since I did not have any paper bags. I will pull seeds from a few more flowers this year and grow at least two next year!

Aphids part Deux

It has been two days since I started the tomato spray.  I managed to get a shot of some of the aphids.  *blech*

EWWWW

Ew Ew Ew

(this is a few days after spraying so they look kinda flattened)

But even ewer-see those black spots up there?

I got 'em

I am pretty sure those are the murdered aphids.  So this seems to have at least done SOMETHING. I have applied the spray three days in a row. Last night and this morning I made sure to flip over each leaf and spray top and bottom.  An additional bonus is that the leaves are still in good shape-much better shape than after the soap spray.

Extra good news since I also found this...

 Aphids on my cucumber-it wasn't immune either :(. I picked off the leaves where I saw them. I have considered planting some Alliums (summer chives) next to my cucumber but I only have one and am worried to risk it after my earlier aph-saster this spring.

Another good thing was the presence of ants.  I was concerned because if one thing is going to die from the tomato spray other bugs might also. But they seemed immune running around and patting their little aphid friends on the butt, probably trying to revive their sweet honeydew factories. (I must admit I felt good knowing that seemed to be in vain)

Aphids

AAAAH, even before I worked on a garden I knew enough to be scared of these little buggies.  The Ladybugs best snack.  I have no pictures of these guys because whenever I see them I panic and start ripping my plants apart.

I have not had any aphids in the past, however this year I had a serious attack of aphids and something very close to aphids in terms of destruction called a Mealybug. They destroyed my three beautiful sunflowers before I even realized what was happening.  Then my honey suckle was attacked followed by my squash and cucumbers.  Currently I have seen a few on my squash and Armenian cucumbers.  These guys are terrible.  I lost 4 squash plants and all my sunflowers, I almost lost the honey suckle and Armenian cucumber and Sumter cucumber as well.  I tried the soapy water and hose spray trick.I did kill those bugs but it destroyed what was left of the plants.

While my current infestation is not that terrible (none of the leaves are destroyed, there is no curling or deformed leaves yet) I am terrified to lose what has finally started to come back  So I am hitting these last few bugs from all sides. So today we will look at a different spray option and over the next few days explore companion planting and beneficial insects.

I followed THIS recipe.  It seemed like a good time as my tomato needed a haircut. Tomatoes are members of the nightshade family (think eggplant and the more poisonous and hallucinogenic belladonna and jimson weed). As a result they are filled with Alkaloids that are released when you cut 'em up and then are suspended in water. While relatively safe for peeps and pets they should destroy those lil buggers in your yard.

I am still a little worried about using this as it apparently will also kill beneficials so I will only be using it on my two main culprits at this time.  The Armenian Cucumber, as it seems to have the biggest problem, and the poor squash (the only one to survive the last infestation).  Plus at this time I have seen few beneficials such as lady bugs in the garden at all this year. Which is probably the reason these pests have grown to such epic portions.

Step One: Chop Tomato Leaves

From my 'maters

Step Two: Soak in Water 

I am soaking all day  rather than overnight-I'm a rebel

Step Three: Strain into a Sprayer

It turns a LOVELY shade of dark greige.  I soaked those babies for about 9 hours. After about 6 of them I noticed the water really did not look any different so I squeezed 'em and mixed 'em around the bowl, the water quickly became a nice light green. Viola a few hours later this lovely mud color.

Step Four: Spray on those Buggies

After learning that some of the soap spray damage I received was related to spraying during the day I sprayed the Armenian Cucumbers and Squash tonight with tomato spray and will give them a good spray down again on Sunday or Monday. 

mystery Babies

I had a dead patch of garden I recently mulched along with the more active parts of my garden. I had recently pulled out a humungo-squash and was preparing to use this as a spot to dig in some compost to get soil ready for winter plants. A few weeks later I went outside to dig some kitchen scraps in and I found a surprise.  Mystery Babies! They are getting bigger. they have even developed a second set of leaves~ TRUE LEAVES! That means they are true plants ! Now what are they? Time to do some research

The leaves are smooth and thin. The seedlings look like tomatoes but the true leaves look too smooth at this point. Also check out that stem...red.

Oh wait, Tomatillo's have red stems-I put some tomatillos somewhere in this garden in June, (two months is average germination time right?)

Tomatillo Seeds someone bothered to label

But oh wait: 

This is a tomato seed

Red stems... the "true leaves" of this tomato plant seem more pokie than what I've got going on, but there certainly are a lot of tomato varieties out there!

So lets follow along and see what happens as they get bigger, who knows maybe I am totally wrong and they will turn into this:

I thought you were better than this.

Peppermint, an easy to grow, bug resistant, beginner kind of plant. Great to use in cooking, tea, homeopathic treatments and cocktails.  What could go wrong????

THIS GUY

and THIS guy

and THIS guy

This guy is gross, this guy is the SAME FRICKIN COLOR AS THE PLANT.  This guy is tiny, this guy is hungry. and this guy has friends, (at least 5 of them)

All that is left is a few sticks

.Look what he did to a thriving blooming pepermint plant, (in about two days). He ate so much that when my husband pulled him off the plants the caterpillar SMELLED LIKE MINT, ew.  So now I am on caterpillar patrol going out daily to find these guys, and my plants are in dire need of some growth hormones.

almost all gone

 This whole disaster started with just a few small holes, then one day  BAM 90% of the plant was gone.

So what IS this thing and how do i stop it, I can not go out and pick up bugs by hand. (bugs are gross) and my husband is not really that excited to go out and pick them for me. 

Thanks internet!

ew, okay picking it off it is...*gross*. I really do not like using pesticide and am trying to avoid it all costs but it sure gets gross.  I wouldn't mind one little guy if he was only snacking but these guys eat a TON! I can not believe how much mint was gone between the first few bites and then the day of death.