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Category: Vegetable and Flower Gardens | Posted: Thu Aug 13, 2009 2:11 am

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It's amazing how fast these things grow. They are kind of like those zucchini that you turn your back on for a few days and poof, you've got a meal for 6.
On the website whose growing guide I have been following we were told that as of the beginning of August not to bother pollinating flowers anymore since they won't mature in time for harvest however I'm banking on the fact that I live 3 blocks from Lake Ontario and we get the lake effect so really, I am in another zone than the gourd farm people....I hope.
By the time they said to stop I only had 3 pollinated gourds. As of tonight we have 10 or 12.
Here's how we pollinated:




Pollination! ( photo / image / picture from jillh's Garden )

and here is the gourd trellis as of August 8th. I've cut all the ends of new vines so that the plant will stop making vines and will start pumping all the goodness into the gourds.





Trellis August 8th ( photo / image / picture from jillh's Garden )

The gourds themselves grow rapidly. These 2 were pollinated on the same night, back around July 30th I think.






( photo / image / picture from jillh's Garden )






( photo / image / picture from jillh's Garden )


The second little gourd to the left of my hand was pollinated just a few days ago. I think they grow about 2 cm in girth and length each day.

The poor veggies have been neglected in this year's blog. They are doing well except our tomatoes (terrible year for rain and not enough heat here in southern Ontario) and the runner beans which are taking up tons of space and not really producing much. I didn't trellis them properly and the vines are all over each other. Maybe they are knocking the beans off by being to jammed in.
We're eating bush beans, zuchs, there are potatoes in the ground but this year I'm being patient and not digging any up. One good way to make your produce look good is to feed it to visiting pet rats (we babysat them, great critters). They each had a 2 cm carrot from the garden and I wish I'd taken a photo. It looked like I grew huge carrots if you used your imagination....



Last edited: Thu Aug 13, 2009 2:11 am

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Jewell2009 wrote on Thu Aug 13, 2009 3:14 am:

Wow the gourd vines and gourds sure have taken off. Can't wait to see them full grown :)

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glendann wrote on Thu Aug 13, 2009 4:37 am:

I really love to grow gourds.They are such fast growers.I madke bird houses out of some of them.Yours looks like the bird house gourds too.

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