Sunflower.
Sunset.
Tag Archive for 'sunflower'
Hey SuperForest
As summer begins to wind down, back-to-school feelings surface and a slight crispness to the air in the mornings anticipates the build up to autumn, growth continues apace in my rooftop city garden – as if a reminder not to wish the summer away so fast:
My first sunflower!
The sunflowers are blooming – I find it almost impossible to look in the face of a sunflower and not smile at the condensed colour of the petals and abundance of tasty seeds.
And the chillies are bearing fruit:
I’ve been excited to see how many insects just a few containers are attracting: ladybugs, wasps, hoverflies and, most excitingly, bees -I like to think I may have contributed in some small way to some delicious London honey.
But gardening, as everything, poses challenges disguised as problems – most recently, in the form of powdery mildew on the zucchini:
white mildew on the leaves
Powdery mildew (the fungus Sphaerotheca fuliginea) is a pretty common infection in zucchini plants, starting with white spots on the leaves and – particularly in warm, humid conditions – developing to coat the leaves, eventually killing them – and without leaves, the photosynthesising powerhouses, the plants can’t flourish.
Sphaerotheca fulginea (So, I was somewhat dismayed to see the fungus rapidly spreading across the plants. But one thing I’ve learned from this whole hasty endeavour in growing has been that my (I’m ashamed to admit) all-too-frequent tactic of sitting back, seeing if the problem will resolve itself, leads more often to dead plants than to Darwinian triumphs – and I didn’t want to resort to chemical fungicides – so, naturally, I took to the internet! (Yep, I would’ve called my Mum, but sadly the Gardening Hotline is on summer vacation). And a little google-fu discovered something awesome: whilst nature provides challenges, it oftentimes also provides surprising solutions – and the solution to powdery mildew? MILK
milky zucchini
Weekly spraying of mildewed leaves with a simple solution of milk and water (approx. 30% milk is thought to be optimal) controls the mildew as well as synthetic fungicides – a faintly funky smell results, but this seems a pretty fair price for avoiding the use of synthetic fungicides. Who knew?
post-milk bath
As you can see, it seems to have been quite effective: the yellowed spots were fully mildewed before and the plants look much healthier now.
I love when we can find natural alternatives to using chemicals or pesticides – do you have any tips to share? I’d love to hear them.
Bathing in milk: good enough for Cleopatra, good enough for zucchini.
Love
P
Hey SuperForest
As you may have seen I’ve recently started my own attempt at growing things – Yes! It’s no Zero One in scale, but in terms of satisfaction it’s undoubtedly been an eye-opener to me.
By way of recap, in a fit of enthusiasm I planted seeds of nasturtiums, french marigolds, rocket (the British name for arugala), spinach, sunflowers and, the big one, zucchini. I’ve been terribly excited at their initial growth and would encourage all of you to give it a go.
The weather has been quite lovely for the last couple of weeks here in London and I think that my seedlings have reaped the benefits. The faster growing plants seem to grow noticeably between when I leave for work in the morning and when I return in the evening. Here’s an idea of the developments in just the last couple of weeks:
the marigolds have gone from their foil windowsill dish to their own pots AND my first flower!
the sunflowers have shot up to 11 inches!
the peppers, which I had thought were non-starters, turn out just to be late developers!
And then, the zucchini. Oh, the zucchini… At the moment, the All Star standouts of my growing experiment. If , when I planted the seeds a little over a month ago, I was told that I’d be dealing with a surplus (an abundance?) of zucchini plants (although no flowers or fruit yet) I would have laughed, mildly hysterically, in the face of it – primarily at the very idea that they would grow. And yet! We have gone from this:
no sign of the zucchini on the left, teeny spinach on the right
To this:
To this:
To now:
SuperForester Mhairi tells me scale factors are important in taking photographs – thus, my clawlike foot, to enable you to judge the size of the zucchini!
The eagle-eyed will notice that the plants are now outside. I re-potted the healthiest looking young plants into containers on my flat roof, where they catch the sun but are fairly sheltered, and since venturing into the fresh air they seem to be flourishing.
I learned that courgettes (the British name for zucchini) are fast growing, hungry plants and, according to Gardener’s World, two zucchini plants should produce enough zucchini for a family of four. So, um, I have 12… But, rather than a mistake, I’m choosing to view this as an opportunity to gift my abundance to friends and colleagues who may not have grown their own from seed but have the space to give them a loving home. Surprise bonus? Carrying a box of seedlings on the Tube en-route to their new homes seems to engender an interest and solicititous goodwill from the jaded London commuters. I hope that, if they bear fruit, I will be able to offer zucchini to friends, neighbours and colleagues in just the same way.
If you’re interested in growing your own zucchini, here is a helpful video from Monty “The Don” Don from Gardener’s World.
And, by way of a refreshing perspective check, here’s a wee taster of my parents’ garden that I was lucky enough to see (and subsequently eat) last weekend:
potatoes, raspberries and insane 4-foot tall parsley
Oh, to imagine.
Love love
P
Good Evening SuperForest
A quick update from Overexcited Adventures in Gardening here in London town! Last week I told of my first foray into seed growing, and lo! the zucchini, they have sprouted:
this picture makes me so happy
The sunflowers too have been progressing apace. From this:
to this:
awesome biodegradable pots and, in the background, tiny peppers taking their turn in the old faithful foil dish
I bought a “dwarf” sunflower variety which are supposed to grow full size flowers on shorter stalks (as a six footer may be a bit overwhelming in the flat) and I planted several so that, fingers crossed, if they grow I can give them to friends – who doesn’t like a sunflower? They do this super-cool unfolding thing, where they first emerge from the soil doubled over and then, all of a sudden unfurl upwards. So cool.
For the other seedlings, I’m in the process of learning a valuable lesson about faith: I guess I found it hard to believe that such tiny seeds could yield whole plants in real life (yes, okay) so I threw quantity at the mix and have ended up with a heap of happy seedlings that are far too closely packed. But! This gave me the opportunity to prick things out:
“pricked out” marigold and nasturtium seedlings, rocket seeds sown – SuperForester Heather has done a much better job than I at sowing lettuces
Yep, “pricking out” – technical gardening term courtesy of my incredibly helpful Mum (seriously, I’ve suggested her and my Dad set up a premium line number to field calls from their daughters on Gardeners’ Question Time and various other practical and skill matters – I reckon they’d make a mint!).
When the seedlings started looking too crowded in their foil dishes I decided it was time that they move into flash new pads with a little more space. I have no pictures of the process, as I was not only covered in compost, but also in full concentration mode as I was so scared of giving the wee things shellshock from the transplant. But, following Mum’s instructions, it involved preparing the compost in the new homes, using the handle-end of a spoon to work down into the seedling dish and waggle it around gently until the seedlings could be carefully lifted out with their roots intact, then using the spoon handle again – this time as a “dibbler” (I’m falling in love with the gardening terms, they really make me laugh) to waggle (not a technical term. In fact, maybe the verb is to “dibble”) a hole in the new compost just big enough and deep enough to fit the seedling and its delicate roots, popping the seedling in and using the spoon (again!) to fill the gaps around the seedling with compost. Gently firmed it down and watered it in. Yay!
Then I spent an anxious couple of days wondering if I had traumatized them and debating whether I should play them music to soothe them. Anecdotal advice on this from friends: apparently you should talk to them, in soothing tones. And subcontracting this out to a dvd of David Attenborough doesn’t count (despite his infinitely more soothing voice and affinity with the natural world)
growing! growing!
Next up comes more thinning out. The tragedy! And repotting. The drama! The suspense! Such good fun.
And, if you’re in central London and have a hankering for zucchini, I have some healthy specimens still looking for a loving adoptive home. They have three leaves now (I’m informed that when I stop naming the leaves individually, that’s when I’ve really got a plant)
Love
P
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