Friday, July 23, 2010

Garden Update - Bees and Bugs

Bees and Bugs are the VIPs of any vegetable, fruit or flower garden. They are essential for the pollination of flowers, fertilizing them into fruits or vegetables that we all covet.





The sight of bees(especially those fuzzy bumble bees), dragon fly and various other tiny insects which flit from flower to flower should fill with you joy.


Flower of what vegetable plant?

I am not sure of the exact reason but the zucchini plants are having a hard time attracting bees and even harder time taking fruit but the Delicata squash is like a magnate for bees.


baby Delicata


The zucchini plants are also in a very shady spot but the leaves are bright and green. So what gives?.


Flower of the bottle gourd butternut squash plant I think


A couple of years ago I had 2 plants that bore so much fruit making it hard to keep up even after giving away quite a few. No such luck this time around.


Malabar Spinach - they just love the heat I hear


I harvested the Delicata squash, more like I was feeling around it when the stem gave way. It is curing on my counter top, which is what should be done to them I read.




A lot of tomatoes are ripening and that is early. Have never had ripened tomatoes before August or is my mind playing games?.





Fresh of the vine tomatoes

When you have just one snake gourd and a couple of bitter gourds, combine the two and make a stir fry. It was tasty enough I guess, everybody was fighting over it.




Stir fried Bitter Gourd and Snake Gourd


Recipe here

Produce from the Garden
Date
Vegetable

Quantity

Recipe
July 18, 2010
Delicata Squash

1
Curing

July 20, 2010

Swiss Chard and Mustard Greens

5 packed cups

Greens with moong dal

July 21, 2010

Bitter Gourd

2

Bitter Gourd with whole moong dal

July 22, 2010

Night Shade

2 cups/td>

Chutney

10 comments:

  1. Delicata squash, now I am going to plant that next year :-) I see bees, but they refuse to pollinate my zucchinis.
    Where do you get seeds for bitter gourd ?

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  2. Lovely garden Indo! Will try the stir fry..looks interesting.

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  3. I really do not know what to write Indo ... it is such a pleasure to see such fresh home grown greens! And to get to cook from your own harvest ... wow! I finally had the heart to cut off a few stems from my precious malabar spinach and cooked them. So satisfying! :-)

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  4. lovely garden Indo. I have sowed seeds and planted small sidlings for many a vegetables this month. hope to get some good crop this year.
    I guess the small yellow flower belongs to ridge gourd vine. looks very similar.

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  5. Beautiful garden, beautiful stir fry..

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  6. I bought some bittergourd this morning at the market. Will probably cook it tomorrow. Your stir fry makes me crave dal and rice and pickle. My mouth is watering.

    About your question re: the use of turkey. I have never tried it with turkey but I am thinking that the same principles apply so yeah. RE: corned beef and potatoes post.

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  7. what wonderful garden pics, Indo! tomatoes are surely early for you.. mine are still green (cherry tomatoes are turning red; but wine ripe are not yet).

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  8. Dear ISG,
    I love your garden updates! I have been too crazy here to take photos of same old same old, cukes and brinjal -- what -- fussing about brinjal!!? Not me, never :)

    I have had one (that's 1) single bumble bee here until this morning, when happily I noticed his cousin honey bee. So that makes 2 pollinators. No ripe tomatoes -- I do think yours are early -- lucky gal!

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  9. Sandeepa, you can get seeds at evergreenseeds.com - where I got all of my seeds this year. Seedsofindia.com is another online store.

    You are indeed correct Sayantani. They are ridgegourd. I had no idea till I saw the baby veggies.

    Linda, Delicata Sqaush is the answer, those thing are like magnets for bumble bees.

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