Around The Winter Garden ~ Pumpkin Update

It's time for an update on my Queensland Blue Pumpkins.

These are an heirloom variety of pumpkins and I saved these seeds from one we bought from a local farmer to eat. I planted them in my winter garden a couple of months back now and it's time to give you an update on their progress.

We've had some fruits yellow and drop from the vine while still small. I think the cause is either lack of pollination or blossom end rot. I've taken time every day or so this last week and a bit to try to manually pollinate the new fruits before the flower falls off.

I think this method is working but only time will tell, I really hope to get a good 5 or 6 big pumpkins out of the winter season. To manually pollinate, simply pick a male flower and remove the petals. Find a female flower, the males are on a stalk and the female flowers have a tiny little fruit and a usually hard up near the vine. Rub the males bits on the females bits and Ta Da Itty Bitty pumpkins grow and hopefully not die and fall off the vine... :-/

bee pollinating.jpg

_{Nature's little helper, I'm helping her out.}

_{Can you see the yellow one? That makes me sad.}

_{These bigger ones should be ok though I hope.}

_{@freakygeak This is about as blue as they get.}

Renovation Works Today

Today saw a a reprieve, for me at least. In that the work was floor tiles and lino cutting and I am not able to do anything effectively at floor level. That left me in charge of keeping the animals out of the way and off the fresh laid tiles. I used the free time to rest and heal up a little plus take some time to water, weed and generally putter about my veggies, which was just divine.

For lunch we had a simple Local Food Salad, with corned beef, boiled egg and some bacon bits scattered over. The meats were from the supermarket as I've run a little low on supplies. For the main meal tonight is a leg of Lamb and roast veggies with garden fresh greens.

Salad lunch.jpg

Hay Bale Garden Project

@greenacrehome and

@pennsif the winnings from your contests have been moved to Bittrex and are waiting for a good price or the start of the haybale garden project to begin. I've got the seedling trays out ready to go next week, for a head start!

Time To Reflect A Little

It's these scant moments in which I find surcease, and reaffirm my mission. Why I'm doing this project and why I try so desperately hard to get a post up everyday. There has been a lot of not so great news around the steemit platform and I guess it deserves the bad press. But it is still a great place to come everyday and report my doings, and catch up with the friends and like-minded folks that I would never have meet were it not for Steemit.

Yes that's you I'm talking about! Thank each of you for coming to read my posts, I've got some really good ones lined up to write after this renovation project is finished. So stick around, pull up a stool grab a beer and tell me how your day was!