Mikhailah's Blog

A Gardener's Diary - Updates and a Baby Bean!
Apr 23, 2007 | 6:02 AM PST
Tags: sweet basil , beetroot , cauliflower , coconut tree , sage , pole beans

On doing my usual daily rounds of weeding, feeding or watering I found a baby bean still on the vine, it's maybe 2-3 inches long and very skinny but still a pollinated bean nevertheless!

I'm not sure if it's one of the one's I tried to hand-pollinate or it did it of it's own accord, boy do I hope so, the prospect of having to pollinate beans (of all things!) by hand seems really daunting, to say the least. I guess later down in the week I'll know.

The eggplants are flowering now, despite being rained on by giant coconut tree leaves (fronds). It's a good job their kind of flexible and give way so easily. They have really beautiful pale purple flowers, I LOVE purple flowers. So much that I've been gathering picture of them (and white, cream and yellow flowers) in an album so I can dream and plan which one's would grow well in the climate I live in.

I pulled up my sweet basil out of the herb garden, way too invasive. I also cut back my sage, I then found it had something yukky growing on it, looked like dry cottage cheese with orangey-red tiny egg-looking mush inside. Cleaned that up, not sure what on earth it was. I need to keep an eye that it doesn't come back. I pulled up my dill also, it was looking spent and sorry for itself. I will be planting coriander in it's place.

I lost a lot of the baby beetroot plants I planted out, I'll wait till what remains are bigger/stronger and replant them more together to save some space. The sun was a bit too much for them.

My lone cauliflower is forming curds now. I loosely tied some of it's leaves around it to shade it from the hot sun. Hoping to get a less 'yellowly' head when it's ready to harvest. This is the first time I've tried this, hope it works.

I heard about some place I can get miniature fruit trees from in St. Andrew. Apparently these trees will bear in the first year and the fruit is sweet and delicious, the price (around $4 each) is pretty good too! So I'll be looking into that. I like the idea of 'miniature', that way I can easily net them to prevent the monkeys chomping on them.

Once the basement apartment is completed we'll be leveling out the rest of the back garden, then (if all goes as planned) I plan on having a deck with some lounge chairs, a bbq pit, shading, plus some bermuda grass and huge pots for the fruit trees and some medium sized pots for my flowers. Sounds like a plan!

My six cucumbers are coming along nicely, (she said tentatively!). some of them have tendrils, they haven't flopped down and begun crawling yet, I can see flower buds forming too. After so many disasters maybe April is a good time to grow cucubits in my garden.