I was wistfully observing the Meyer lemon trees at Home Depot last week. I wish we had a big enough yard for a couple of fruit trees. Maybe we should have the pool filled with potting soil.
I am getting into the bigger planting season now. I planted 146 x 2 cabbages today. Cauliflower is tomorrow.
Two seeds in every cell. When they are suitable, I have the choice of trying to separate them or just snip the weaker plant.
When we first moved here, my hubby was dead set against my planting fruit trees in the yard. I bought a little delicious tree and just set it in, or at least the fruit tree fairy did. It was a grafted tree so had a few blossoms on it already, And when I let him pick the first apple from it (I took a picture) he was a little less negative. He did not want to mow around trees. He bought a pear tree and put it in the woods. I told him it would not work because not enough sun, and it got 20 feet tall and spindly before it got any fruit which were out of reach but...This part is for you: I bought a stanley prune/plum tree. They say tree roots grow into the foundation if too close. That is probably true for oak and elm trees, but I took a gamble and planted it in the foundation plantings. It eventually grew up over the roof and I had to climb on the roof to harvest half of the plums. Best plum tree I ever had. But it only lived about 12 years. Foundation was fine. Then a gremlin put in several trees in the lawn. He mows with a lawn tractor and seldom does the trimming, for pete's sake...
Well, I'm annoyed. My cucumber plants in the raised bed are looking pale and wan. What the hell is going on there? All the money spent on "raised bed garden soil" and special potting mixtures, but the two leftover plants I put directly into the ground are doing great. I used to be good at gardening but somehow I've lost my touch. I'm going to put a thin layer of compost on them but if they don't look better in a week then they are getting yanked.
Today I received a packet of poblano pepper seeds and some rosemary seeds. I'm going to put a couple of them in the raised beds and also in an Aerogarden. I hope I get results from some of them. I also received the soil test meter gizmo from Amazon. It seems to work, at least it registers something when I place it in the dirt. I tested all 3 raised beds and each of them had slightly different results but all "good." Also, the cucumber plants are looking somewhat better so they get to stay for another week.
This month I'm planting a flower bed. And the digging up the grass is not easy, not taking my walks much so energy level is low. I transplanted 7 so far, now need to prepare soil for seeds. So lots more diffing and putting grass in bare spots in the yard, ' thanks Leo and Foxy'.
My gardening endeavor is turning out to be more aggravation than anything. My little cucumber transplants have started blooming and they are barely 8" tall. It's a bunch of male flowers and I read that planting too early can cause this, and will likely end up with a stunted plant and no cucumbers. So "getting a jump" on the garden season was a waste of time. I need to pull all those up and plant the remaining seeds I have left directly into the soil. Stupid dirt.
Male flowers always emerge first except on the gynecious and parthenocarpic varieties of cucumbers and squash, as the females need the males to already be available for pollination. Planting too early may have stressed the plants and made this phenomenon worse, but it is the natural way of things. You can buy gynecious or parthenocarpic seeds if you want to avoid this completely. Here is a link to a seed offered by David's Seeds in Texas. You may find these in a rack in your area. Just look for those two words. Gynecious means all female flowers and parthenocarpic means that it can set fruit without pollination.
I don't think the male flowers is the issue; it's just that the plants are much too small to be blooming at all. They haven't even begun to "vine" yet.