Tag Archives: Zucchini

Indoor Plant Starts

Here are my indoor plant starts for this year. The front row of cups are beef steak tomatoes that I saved the heirloom seeds from last year’s plants. I am so excited that they germinated so well. You can read more about saving tomato seeds here. The seeds were planted 12 days ago and many sprouted within just a few days.

On the back row on the left is a zucchini start. I planted two seeds in the cup but so far only one has sprouted but I had that happen last year too. Sometimes the seeds take extra time to come up.

The other two back row cups are cherry tomato plants that I started from store bought seeds.

As it is still cold at night here, these plant starts will continue to grow in my kitchen window until things warm up more. I will be transfering them into some bigger pots soon so the plants can have more room to grow. Then I will be hardening them off outside during the day until I can plant them in the garden outside.

Zucchini in the Fall

My Zucchini plant is still producing even into Fall this year. I started this plant from a seed in the house and planted it out in the garden early this Spring. It almost died after a big rain storm and hail in early May. I remember having to prop up the seedling with a twig to try and save it.

I have to just shake my head to believe this is the same plant now. It has produced so many Zucchinis this year and is still going even with temps down to 37 last night. They say one key, useful tip is to keep harvesting Zucchinis all season long. According to an old gardening book I have, it says when you continually harvest the Zucchinis, the plant thinks it needs to keep producing. Even now, I have new blooms and Zucchinis growing.

I have frozen Zucchini in the freezer, used raw Zucchinis in salads, stews and several other dishes. I just love Zucchini and have been so happy with the garden output of this plant. So hopefully the frost holds off for a bit longer so I can enjoy even more late Zucchinis this year.

Garden Update

I haven’t posted in awhile and thought I’d share a garden update. It has been a challenging year with many of my seeds not wanting to grow very well. I had trouble with green onion seeds from two different companies that did not sprout. Then my tomato seedlings did not want to grow much after about an inch or two of development.

But I am having success with my zucchini plants. See photo above of the big one which I have already harvested several zucchinis from already. There is another little one on the upper right which is hidden somewhat. I planted this one later so to stagger my crop. I love zucchini and what to be able to have an on-going crop so I planted one early and another seed was started recently.

Next I want to share an interesting development that happened in a old wheelbarrow that I keep for composting in the garden. I just throw all sorts of composting material like coffee grounds, egg shells, veggie trimmings, and whatever else I might have to toss. Well about a month ago I threw in some cantaloupe rinds and seed pulp into this wheelbarrow. Guess what, I have several wild cantaloupes growing now. I cleaned up the area around the plants and have been watering them faithfully. Check out the photo below.

I have never grown cantaloupe and not sure if it’s very conducive to growing in our climate but I’m giving it a go. I can’t wait to see how this experiment turns out.

Here are a few more photos of my tomato plants. The one tomato plant in the distance was started from some later seeds so it is smaller. I hope it will have enough time to development. But the big one closest to the camera already has many green tomatoes on it. Continue Reading →

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