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I have a question on some zucchini plants I'm growing. All my plants are on a 14th floor balcony, and I don't have a whole ton of flowering stuff, so I'm not really counting on bees to drag their rear end up there to pollinate my flowers. I'm going the self-pollinating route, but so far I have a TON of male flowers starting to bloom but not a single flower. There's one that MIGHT be but it's just starting out. Is this normal? Is there anything I can do to encourage female flower production?
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Jun 15, 2009 15:59
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| # ¿ Apr 24, 2024 16:44 |
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Another balcony manual pollination question: My tomatoes are starting to flower like mad, and after some research, it looks like the correct way to get them to pollinate is to shake the flower stems around a bit. I've been doing this without a great deal of success so far. My method is to take a chopstick and rapidly shake back and forth on each blossom. Is there something I'm missing? Any tips on how to do this properly?
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Jun 25, 2009 08:30
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Basil in particular I've found extremely picky. I have a few plants that have been hanging on for dear life for a while, but they're not exactly inspiring. I've had a lot of luck with parsley, actually. Others that have worked really well this year are dill (really, if you can't get dill to work right there's something seriously up), tarragon (which I've actually neglected more than I should and it does fine) and mint. Some cilantro coming up but it was planted way too late, and rosemary but it takes for-freaking-ever to grow from seed.
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Jun 26, 2009 17:35
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They aren't getting a whole ton of sun to be honest. But enough sun that tomatoes in the same place are absolutely thriving, so it can't be THAT big an impact, I would think. I have a fair bunch of them in 8" pots, watered regularly. Every single other thing in my garden is growing like gangbusters, but the basil always looks like it's clinging on for dear life.
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Jun 26, 2009 22:02
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I'm giddy this morning because my first tomatoes are just starting to grow. I guess my shaking technique was enough and I'm just too much of an impatient bastard. My one lonely zucchini is humming along as well, and I can already see 4 or 5 female flowers a few days from blooming. On top of that, my peas are starting to flower like mad. All in all, a good garden day.
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Jun 27, 2009 14:33
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You bastards in non-snowy climates  I jumped the gun and tried to do some Rapini WAY early and the seedlings are leggy as gently caress. This weekend I'll try to get some early stuff started, but I'm starting to think a grow light is a necessity since we're pretty short on sunny days right now. Speaking of grow lights, I had this kooky plan to grow the odd herb in pots hanging from a rod underneath a shelf in a kitchen - only problem is I get about zero natural sunlight in the kitchen. Anyone have any recommendations for grow lights that can install under a shelf and don't take up a lot of room? Does such a thing exist?
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Feb 25, 2010 16:26
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Just started off my early seeds today - a few herbs, peppers, some rapini and my first batch of lettuces. Tempted to start tomatoes, but it's still a bit early yet. Anyone have any advice for growing daisies? I've never done flowers before and they seem to be perfoming much more poorly than the vegetables I typically do. I'm assuming sunlight is a bigger factor, so I set up a ghetto grow light setup yesterday, but any other ideas would be appreciated.
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Mar 21, 2010 14:31
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I did a purely balcony grow last year, that was fairly successful given the conditions. We were west facing, and high up so there was no shade from other buildings, but even still I doubt we had much more than 6 hours of sun in a given day. Easy stuff:
Moderate success:
Harder:
I had floor to ceiling windows so seed starting worked excellently - much better than my current house which doesn't get quite as much sun.
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Mar 24, 2010 13:54
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Yeah, the overhanging planters are great since you avoid any shade from the screen under the railing (if you have one) and you probably get a couple more hours of sun just because of that. They are unfortunately pretty limited to smaller things though.
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Mar 24, 2010 20:57
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myfolia that Cerri mentioned is really good, actually. Some of the cool stuff like tracking when plants should likely germinate / be transplanted costs some money (like 22 bucks a year), but the free stuff is perfectly useable as well. I'm on there as enki42 if anyone wants to add me.
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Mar 27, 2010 16:18
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Chajara posted:Just signed up on Myfolia as Chajara. Looks like a great site, though I'm debating whether or not I want to shell out 22 bucks for the special features. The planting timeline alone is pretty cool. I just signed up, but it's already saved me a couple of cases of abandoning seeds because I think they're never going to germinate. I also started the Goons in Gardens group if anyone is interested. enki42 fucked around with this message at 18:39 on Mar 28, 2010 |
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Mar 28, 2010 18:35
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Veila posted:Cross posting here too. How much sun are you getting there? Looks a little on the confined side. I have fairly dappled sun so I'm interested in any raised bed success stories for sketchy amounts of sunlight.
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Mar 31, 2010 15:21
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One question I hope you guys can help me with: Some rapini seedlings I planted recently are CRAZY leggy - they're just starting to show true leaves now and they're about 2-3 inches long. I've already attempted to correct my mistake by putting them much closer to my grow light setup (as in 2-3 inches) and they are now not falling over at all, but should I really expect much from these plants? I don't think I have enough time to go back to the drawing board and resow them, but if they're going to be a waste of garden space I'll just trash them. I figure since half the reason to grow rapini is for stalks they'll probably be ok. Also, is rapini especially prone to this or something? I have a lot of stuff starting up now, including some plants I'd figure would be light hungry, and it's the only one to get the ridiculously long stems.
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Mar 31, 2010 15:33
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Is it safe to transplant stuff other than tomatoes deep? I always thought that was a no-no unless the stems will grow roots. I'm crazy jealous Marchegiana, I always want to grow asparagus but I can't commit to wait more than a year to get stuff.
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Mar 31, 2010 16:35
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| # ¿ Apr 24, 2024 16:44 |
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Zeta Taskforce posted:You’re not going to get roots on the buried part of the stem like tomatoes, but you can plant them a bit deeper than they were as transplants so they don’t fall over when you first put them out. They will thicken up when they are outside. If they end up failing, you will still have time to go to the garden center and buy some broccoli transplants or sow some lettuce. No, no additional heat at all. I was potentially overwatering them a bit, I'm going to cool down on that for a while and see if the situation improves.
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Mar 31, 2010 18:05
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