Mystery Plant

Chaos Garden

I've mentioned my Chaos Garden before - it's the fabulous garden that's grown up in the compost pile I had to move due to an adventurous dumpster diving dog.  I thought I had a very cool lemon cucumber...but I have to tell you it's starting to look more like a pumpkin.  Yes, a very large pumpkin, and there are about 15 plants that are growing like kudzu right now...and they are spreading about six inches every day  It's going to be Halloween in July for us!

Have any of you grown pumpkins before?

Blossom End Rot

Calcium.  We all need it.  Our plants need it too, and they let us know very clearly when they are deficient. If you've ever had a zucchini lose its blossom and start to rot, you know that sinking feeling of being out of control. We hate to put all that effort into our garden and then watch it rot.

My Chaos Garden, which grew in my compost pile, is having this problem, and my friend Justin Duncan of Xeriscaping Solutions gave me an interesting solution.  We boiled about a dozen eggshells for 20 minutes or so (I'll warn you, don't use your good pan - the residue is really difficult to remove). After letting the water cool we strained it, put it in a spray bottle and sprayed it on the leaves for immediate absorption.  The plants seemed to like it.

I had already lost several zucchini, and the ones on the plants now seem to be larger.  I'll be spraying this a couple times per week to see if I can gauge how much it needs.  Here's a picture of what blossom end rot looks like in a zucchini:

And this is what the plant looks like now, after spraying twice.  The zucchini look fine.  You can see the affected fruit in the bottom of picture - it's actually older than the two perfect zucchini you see in the photo, just stunted. This is definitely something I'll add to my gardening arsenal. Thanks Justin!

Sometimes you just have to start over...

Re-dug bed with Olla pot

My friend Vanessa helped me install a raised bed last fall.  All was good, it looked great - everything came up.  Then it just stopped.  Things began to turn yellow, and growth was stunted.  The only thing that seemed to make it were the peas that I planted (which are still doing well - I ate some today!)

I did everything I could think to get the garden to grow - I used freshly brewed worm wine to add biologicals, as well as fresh worm castings.  I added some alfalfa on top, along with some chicken manure and compost for nitrogen.  I mulched to maintain moisture.  Then after about eight weeks, I gave up.