Zucchini Started Fruiting

 A bit of a rush to pick our Zucchini's before we attend my sisters funeral, the one's picked will be given to family later in the week.

These are our cross we did, but they are reverting back to green like the pollen donor and we may lose a filial generation if we can't get seeds from the two remaining yellow fruited plants

What's Happening Here

A lot has been happening here of late and a few posts have been missed being posted, the death of my sister has slowed things down for us here, but we will manage to get back on track soon.

This is our Murnong bed (M. walteri) which is starting to die back, even though there are lots of flowers sill on them. The flowers are producing smaller seed heads now, with a lot getting sprinkled back into the boxed area of the bed.

 

 

Bird Scare - A Memory

 I had a photo show up on Facebook as a memory from 10 years ago, of an Owl Bird Scare we bought for about $20.00 at the time. These were marketed as the best bird scare on the market and when you think birds are scared of owls, it sort of makes sense - its head was on a spring and bobbed up and down in the wind.

Well we we amazed from the beginning how the wild birds ignored this "statue" in the garden, actually sitting on it during the day. Later on, I took it to work and put it up in the glasshouse, but it proved to be a useless piece of junk.

When we emptied the shed when we moved, this owl unfortunately found itself on the rubbish pile. Maybe in another life it will get recycled into something more useful - maybe not.

Collected Seeds - Murnong

We've had a ball growing our Murnong plants over Winter and we've managed to collect some seeds to grow next Autumn. The variety is the sought after Microseris walteri, the only variety that is supposedly the biggest, tastiest tubers of the varieties that were cultivated and harvested by the Australian Aboriginal peoples, pre 1840.

More on these to follow, as I'm hoping to grow a big lot from our collected seeds.

Secondhand Tubes - My Mistake

 I advertised on the local Buy & Sell for some Native (Forestry) Tubes and ended up wasting my money on buying these tubes (photo) at Briagolong without looking better at them. I wanted about 150 but probably got far less than that in total, but when sorted I got 60 half decent tubes, if I can get them cleaned.

I got the offer of some from Toora, but declined as too far to go to collect them. - I'll keep looking I suppose.

Another Dump of Rain

We managed another 13mm of rain up until 9.00 a.m. this morning, on top of the 30mm we recorded yesterday.

Below shows the radar at almost 6.00 a.m. as it cleared us and was heading east.

 

Zucchini Pick

 Jan picked some more zucchinis this morning.

Potted Up

 Today these cuttings got to live in potting mix for a short while until the roots get established. The important things to remember doing this is to label them and keep them on the wetter side of damp.

This variety is showing some signs of leaf variegation.

Our Mower Was Sick

Over-revving, cutting out and hard to start were symptoms our old lawn mower was exhibiting, so what to do. I could have taken it to the repair shop in Sale, but last time anyone looked at it, they made things worse.

The mower is over 20 years old and never really been a good mower in that time, it worked, but only just. I diagnosed the problem and went and spent $5.90 on parts and within balf an hour, I had it fixed and running good. I suspected a leaky O ring, but which one was unknown, so replaced all 4 of them along with  a new needle.

Thank you Youtube, you're a big help in fixing our mower.

First Pick of the Season

 Today we picked our first Zucchini's, all our own cross, but all different in their own way and colours.

Knowing Your Zucchini Flowers

 If I suggest you're better to hand pollinate your Zucchini flowers as a way to increase your chances of getting fertile seeds, so then you say to me you're not sure how to do it, which is fine, so first we'll need to know what the male and female flowers look like for this task.

There are two ways to tell the male flowers, looking at the flower from the back and also from the front. From the back of the flower, you'll just see a slender stem holding the flower (photo) but when you look inside the flower, you'll see why it's easy to identify as the male by the Anther. (photo).

 

 

Now on to the female flowers, the two ways here is to look at the back of the flower, where you should see a miniature Zucchini connected to the flower. The other way is to look inside the flower at the female bits (Stigma), which is totally different to the male flower, so you can't get these mixed up. Look at the photo with the female bits inside the flower and once you've recognised it, you'll never get confused again. 

Continuing in two's, if you want to hand pollinate your female flowers on your zucchini's, there are two ways, one is to collect pollen from the male flower and rub in onto the stigma of the female flower. The second way is to cut off the male flower, then gently remove the petals of the flower, careful not to damage the male anther which is loaded with pollen. Gently rub the male flower onto the female stigma so that the pollen is transferred to the female.

 

 

 

 

Mother Nature Got This One Wrong

In humans we call it Siamese Twins, but in horticulture this genetic disorder is a form of fasciation where two like cells merge or join as one.

Note that there are two separate flowers to show the two joined fruits.

Waiting Game

Withing a couple of minutes, this Murnong seed head started to open while I was watching it, so now in the wind I've had to put a bag on it so the seeds don't blow away.

This seed head was probably the biggest so far to even look like opening, so now we wait.

Tomato Plants - Pruned and Bagged

 Today, most of the tomato plants were pruned, then they received their second blossom bags, as part of my yearly routine. Fitting bags to the blossoms on the tomato plants is something a very rare few actually do, but I've been caught before growing plants that ended up being the wrong or crossed seed and wasting 6 months doing so.

Striking Tomato Cuttings In Water

It's been a bit slow due to the low light days but we are getting roots showing on our tomato cuttings, started 22-25th October..

Our First Collected Murnong Seed

Three seed heads collected, except for a few the wind blew away, so we'll see what we can collect over the coming weeks. Today it was blowing a gale, so I used an organza bag to cover the seed head with to allow some drying of the seed before we harvested it.

Here's some photos of today.

 

Our First Microseris Walteri Seeds

 Not getting too excited here, but our first Murnong (Microseris walteri) seed head has opened, so apart from looking like expectant parents, we're excited to see this, the first one to open.

The only concern I have is that although it is close to our apple tree, I only saw a couple of bees go near them, while the apple tree was loaded in flowers at the same time.

Anyway, we just need to see what we need to do now, before the wind blows them away. 

Seed Saving - Tomato Seeds

 Not quite how I do it, but close enough.

More Zucchini Plants

 We have some new Zucchini seedlings growing, not that we need them, but in order for us to continue growing more filial generations of our Zucchini cross, we need more yellow fruited plants. So far we were expecting four yellow plants and two green plants, but because the zucchinis are so unstable we ended up with four green and two yellow, which won't give us enough variability with just two yellow plants.

Time will tell now as we wait and see what these new ones give us, so fingers crossed.

Infested Pepper Plant

 I went for a walk after a break in the rain showers and came across one of my Madaya Pepper plants covered in some awful looking slime that resembled some sort of insect eggs. After taking some photos, I sent them to my friend Duncan to see if he could recognise them. 

Little did I realise he had posted them online and got a response and a name for this problem. An unidentified Slime Mould, a form of Myxomycetes, so I found it wasn't harmful to the plant, which was good. Thank you Duncan.

Jan later wiped it from the plant with her rubber glove and deposited in in the bin.

 

The Old Ozgrow Header

 This is the old header from my Ozgrow Garden Forum started October 2008.

Another Post from the old Ozgrow Forum

 Here's a post from the old Ozgrow days where I posted about making the change in name on my Village Red tomato, which I still grow here now.

Greek Witness Post on Ozgrow

 A blast from the past finding this old post on Ozgrow, 11 years after posting it.

June 28, 2011, 04:21:30 PM »

About 4 or 5 years ago my neighbour gave me some tomato seeds of a huge red tomato that he had given to him by a "befriended" Jehovah Witness, who's wife is of Greek nationality. She had bought these seeds here from Greece some time ago and has saved the seed each year by letting a tomato rot and dry. Now these seeds never did look very fertile going on the colour they turned out after soaking and drying, but they surprised me and did grow. I sold the seedlings I grew at my plant sale and never grew one here, and I have no idea what they look like, fruit wise. For a working name, Raymondo suggested I call them Greek Witness, which I did, hence the name.

I think I will try again and grow one in the garden this season.

 

Maybe a Variegated Tomato Variety

 Checking the new tomato plants in the garden, I noticed some variegated leaves on a plant, which looked interesting and got my attention. Knowing I was growing a second plant of the same variety furter down the garden bed, I looked at it and it too had some variegated leaves.

Probably very unusual for this variety, so I sent my friend a link to a post I made on Tomatoville. I'll have to wait until I see what he says about them.

***Addendum

Today (Thu) I took two laterals from these plants and the variegation are showing in the laterals, as seen below.