lemon cucumber confusion?? =s

well when my first cukes (bush) started flowering i went google crazy with searches on self pollinating, how to tell a male from female flower, etc. now that i finally have that down, a day or two before we went away for the long weekend the lemon cucumber starts to bloom! like a bunch!!! great, mommy's gonna be a few hundred miles away from home, and my baby is just starting to go CRAZY!

i did a quick once over (which around here equals 3 long hard questioning glances, lol), but i could not tell the male flowers from the female?! maybe it was just that the males bloom first??? when i came home and took a little time to oggle and molest my darling, you guessed it, i STILL could not tell the difference =/

sooo, let's go to the tape (internet). I found this quick, sweet, and to the point thread over at Marin Homestead on how to tell the difference between a male and female lemon cucumber flower, SCORE!

check it out, pretty much the same as other cukes, female has a fruit at the base of the flower, blah, blah. i'll take another survey tomorrow, but i think it's just male flowers currently in bloom.
we'll see...

my veggies

bush cukes and brandywine 'maters

jalapenos and thai hot peppers

yellow pear 'maters (L) and lemon cukes (Middle)

spinach and more spinach and green oak leaf lettuce

sweet taters in their BIG POT =p (hopefully)

that's it for now! what veggies are you guys growing? ;}

a lil garden OCD

yep, i'm a wee bit obsessed! everything at the forefront of my thoughts is garden related, and being under the weather unable to workout has not helped to distract me from my green itch =/ so been reading all the blog post possible and joining all the FB pages about gardening, balcony gardening, container gardening, urban gardening, even punk rock gardening!! yes, i know, lol!

well, for the most part my seedlings are doing there thing. i suppose? how do i know? i need a week by week picture guide of what they should look like...tomorrow will be one week since i've planted them and everything is sprouting up except for my spearmint and rosemary, what the heck?! basil - up. supposed to be 7-14 days.check. thyme - up. should be 14 - 21 days, woot! check. dill - up, should be 10-21 days, so yay! spearmint should germinate in 7-14 days and....NADA ={ rosemary germs in 14-21, so, i'm not too worried about that.

on another note, my balcony/garden makeover is coming along...

this is only a week of focus/work, can't wait to see what's to come!
go me!!! =p

that tuber's crazy!

a few weeks ago when the bf was in the kitchen i hear "whoa, what's that?! look at that guy!" when i turned there on top of the microwave was the most PUNK ROCK sweet potato i have ever seen! he was sporting a lil green and purple mohawk of a leaf/root consistency. half paying attention i said, "you can throw it away," even though inside i was a lil curious and embarrassed at the same time. being basically the same being after all these years, he said, "no, it's kinda cool, let's see what happens," and on we went with our night, weekend, following days. time rolled by and another weekend was upon us and we noticed our little guy was still doing well (chilling and growing, but now on top of the counter).

i asked babe if we should move him, thinking maybe he'd benefit from light and should be placed closer to the window. he said, 'no obviously he likes where he is, look at 'em." sure enough lil tuber's mohawk was growing at an alarming rate. i decided to put him on the plant stand near the window anyway. i'm sure you can guess what happened. yep, his lil vine thingies (i now know they are called slips) started reaching for the sunlight! so not only was he punk, but now had a gangsta lean! i LOVE THIS GUY!

i'd been itching to garden and this lil science experiment was just adding fuel to the fire! i decided i need to do some research, and quickly headed for google.

"my sweet potato is growing" enter. 

tons of articles popped up and i was drawn to one i found on 'you grow girl,' a funky gardening blog where the chick had grown her sweet potatoes in a reusable shopping bag! a bag? yes. i guess this is a practice commonly used in england.

to sum it up, you can let the little slips grow to 5-6 inches (my lil guy's longest ones are around 10"!!!), twist them off and plant them, or you can put the sweet potato in a jar of water let it get roots/grow to be a leafy plant and toss that into the ground. i just put him in water today, we'll see what happens. i'm hoping for the best. moral of the story, i'm going to try to grow sweet taters! and this experience, has gotten the ball rolling on my gardening project, which is long overdue! more to come on that later....stay tuned....

my little man =} he wanted to grow so badly, couldn't toss him.

hope he grows into this someday!  a mother can dream...(from You Grow Girl thread,)

Growing Sweet Potatoes in a Bag)