Have they dried up or not just not been pollinated? I think some people try to hand pollinate to aid things, especially in greenhouses if there are minimal pollinators.
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Not sure. The greenhouse has been open during the day and there have been frequent daily visitors of bees, hover flies etc - but no hand pollination. This is my first year so still learning what to do and not to do! Lower branches have good setting of fruit with the same treatment.
Only this afternoon a potted shrub is swarming with what looks like ants many with wings. Any thoughts of what this is and how to get rid of them?
Flying antsā¦ they do appear to be swarming todayā¦
Washing up liquid diluted in a squirty bottle or ant powder probably your best betsā¦
I thought we already did flying ant dayā¦ did they not get the memo?
Thatās what what I thought too. So thought it might be something else. But loads of tweets in the last few hours about it.
And thanks for the tip.
Or you could leave them be (assuming they are outside), they will be gone shortly!
I was working outside today and there did appear to be quite a few around, mostly near my feet!
I lost about half of my tomatoes to blight.
Had a tremendous climbing french bean harvest.
Have got some celeriac in the ground, looking to harvest in a few weeks - havenāt tried growing it before, but itās looking cheerful.
Can anyone identify the item in the picture? I didnāt plant these! They were quite lively - climbing all over my tomatoes and with yellow flowers like courgettes
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Looks nice! Slightly hard to work out the scaleā¦ but you can get round courgettes like this:
Just one word of warning, if itās a selfseeded squash of some sort, and it tastes bitter, throw it out as it will be toxic. Unlikely but possible.
Let us know what it is!
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No time like the present. I just cut it open. I think self-seeded squash is right. The seeds must have survived in my compost bin, canāt think how else they got planted except when I spread compost into the beds.
But the fruit donāt look like any squash that Iāve bought. I have previously successfully dried and planted seeds form squash that Iāve bought. Maybe these seeds are from a weird hybrid (GM?) designed not to allow seeds to be used?
I wonāt be cooking this. There are two left out in the garden, weāll see if they develop any further.
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I had pumpkins last year that looked like that first and then turned orange.
I didnāt know that. Squashes do tend to pop up unexpectedly donāt they. I would be inclined to cook it up and see what its like. Bad idea perhaps.
The Metro is perhaps not the best source of information for this, but the article seems reasonable:
Cucurbitacins are bitter-tasting compounds that can be poisonous to humans.
Cucurbitacins are rare because farmers tend to cultivate plants carefully so that they produce little to none of the compounds that can be toxic to humans.
However, if there is an accidental cross-pollination of crops or a rogue batch of seeds used by amateur gardeners, then produce can grow that has the potential to cause illnesses when eaten.
Vegetables like courgette and squash that have high levels of cucurbitacins wonāt necessarily look poisonous ā making them more dangerous as you only know they could be toxic after eating them and then tasting bitterness.
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Well I never.
Just to add that it is quite rare to get bitter courgettes and squash but there was a batch of seed last year that came from fruit that had been cross pollinated, probably by some ornamental gourd. If you just taste it then you can easily work out if it is toxic as it will be bitter - however cooking can disguise the bitterness and lead to complications.
The issues with saving seed from any squash or related veg is that they can all cross pollinate each other so you get weird hybrids that may not give anything like fruit you saved seed from. Also a lot of shop bought butternuts etc might be F1 hybrids and wont come true regardless. I donāt believe there are any GM veg available in the UK thoughā¦
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