June 2011

As I approach the one year anniversary of my blog I am once again hopeful that my garden will actually produce something of value.

The yellow squash plants surprisingly started blooming just a week or two ago. I say surprising because the first time I grew them the plant was much larger, as can be seen here.

This time, the squash plants only grew to about 6 inches in height, which I believe is due to the much smaller container in which I planted them. Clearly I knew that the size of the container is important, however, I didn't realize it made this much of a difference. This is a good lesson to learn, and going forward I will be more mindful of the size and type of containers I use when planting my seeds.

Spinach, it seems, does better when grown in a smaller container. The first time i attempted to grow spinach I used too large a container and this was the result. Quite different this time around as you can see in the picture below.

I do have to mention that I planted the seeds much earlier in the year when the weather was still cool. Whereas, last year I planted the seeds in the middle of summer and we went through a few bouts of unusually warm weather and the combination contributed to the demise of my spinach. Same can be said about the flowers. The cooler temperatures have certainly helped my flower box and although I have yet to grow any actual flowers, I am optimistic that I am somewhat close to success.

The large thick seedlings are all part of the sweet william flower mix that I planted in the box, you can also see a few traces of the oregano but they don't seem to be doing quite as well. The tall thin seedling in the top left part of the flower box is mystery to me.

Could this be a powderpuff aster plant growing? If you look closely you can see the dozens of tiny yellow dots on the plant. Is this a sign of a plant about to flower? I certainly hope so but I will not get my hopes up too much as the plant also seems to be covered in what looks like powdery mildew. I have cut off the leaves with the white marks on them but each time it just seems to get worse. It has not affected the overall growth of the plant so I have decided to just let it be for now.

Finally, there is the yellow banana pepper plant. These seeds I planted well over 6 months ago and although they initially grew quite fast their maturity stalled and only in the last few weeks has it begun to pick up again.

After some heavy pruning a few weeks ago I started noticing a bit of a growth spurt and the plants became thicker and sturdier. I contemplated pulling out a few of the seedlings and re-potting them in individual containers but I do not want to disrupt the progress.