Hi All, Just wanted to introduce myself - My name is Ellice, I'm 22, and am just starting to make our small town block a bit productive. I have 2 dogs and 2 chooks and amazingly they are all best of mates. I have a vege garden, well it was, until the pumpkins took over. There is now a heated battle between the pumpkins, watermelon and tomatoes. They all seem pretty happy tho. I don't know if these plants are supposed to be planted together, but thats where the chooks scratched the seeds so thats where they came up! Cant wait to get it going properly, i'll probably need alot of help along the way! Will be good to get to know you all!
welcome aboard, yeh my pumpkins are wanting to rule the roost so to say same as my cherry tom's rambling all over the place, next year i think i'll cage them. put some button squash in for the first time the fruits may be small but the plants are huge leaves are bigger in size than the jap pumpkins. len
hi there elliceh I'm doing something similar with our block in Ferny Hills, and similarly, the pumpkins are taking over! I have counted at least 8 good sized pumpkins. good luck, I'm guessing we might face similar challenges, so don't be afraid of posting, it'll probably be something I had been wanting to ask.
LOL - pumpkins - - they're now our living green mulch - doin wonders for the soil and other plants - if we untangle the strangle hold. some of our vines are approaching 3 years old - - we didn't rip them out, they just kept growing and flowering and fruiting so we left them there. They're jap pumpkin. these are a few pics I took this am - of other things - and you can see the pumpkins growing everywhere i'm finding that they help with pollination of other thjings - because their flowers have so much pollen they really draw in the bees - and they act as a confusion/blocking agent for any pests that are looking for things to eat or lay eggs on. And if an odd leaf or two dozen do get attacked by pests looking for something else, there's no loss in vigour of the pumpkin plant
Wow those pics are awesome - cant wait for my garden to look half as good as that! I think our problem is we dont have enough bees - there are tonnes of flower and tiny pumpkins but they all seem to die off with the flowers. Or is there something else i'm doing wrong?
g'day elli, you will need to do some ahnd pollinating we all get to do that task helping the poumpkins to ferilise. too easy realy early in the morning at absolute lates say 8am after 9am too late but earlier the better, select a nice healthy male flower for each female flower i gently peel away the male petals and insert the thingy bit into the middle of the female bit in the flower, works a treat, you can do just dusting ie.,. using the male flower wipe that male sector over the female sector (tou can see i'm a full certified horticulturist hey lol). now to attract more bees, get some sow/milk thistles growing dandelions are also good so is clover, lotinomus and wyncassia, but all time faves are mustard plant ie.,. curly leafed chinese mustard and herbs especially sweet basil. len
Thanks for that Len, I do have a fair bit of dandelion growing and the pumpkins are right next to (and now invading) my flower garden where there are lots and lots of flowers. I dont really know where they are! We also have alot of ladybugs, but they are yellow and black... i havnt seen these before but we have alot of them on the pumpkin leaves.
Gardenglen! you usually give good advice!!! No!!, The orange and black lady beetles are predators, they eat aphids and all those things that will eat your nice plants.. the yellow and black ones are even better!, We agonise untill we see the first ones then we are relieved! I have read that they eat mildew and I have certainly noticed they congregate on affected leaves, and when we have the yellow ones our mildew is much better. As far as I know they will definitely not "eat holes in your leaves" but I do agree that they probably don't polinate. We hand-polinated a few pumpkins, but the rest were done by some insect unknown. - you can tell the female ones by the little bulb behind the flower, so you need to get some male polen onto the female flowers.. use a piece of straw or a cotton bud.
ppp, i'm no bug eggspert, as pumpkins don't get aphids the only lady beetles on my plants are eating the foliage, as they do with the zucchini, potato plants and button squash, now the lady bug that gets on the one and only rose in capativity in a pot they eats the aphids, i have had a lady beetle eat powdery mildew in the past it was orange as i recall dunno how many spots they had tho'? don't get so much p.m anymore nowadays. as i have plenty of foliage i share it with them. can't see as how the advice is not consistant tho"?
Well im glad i didnt go out and start squishing the yellow ones - they are all over the few leaves that have mildew and a few others are roaming around the other leaves. Very cute i must say! I did some pollinating this morning around 7am. I just picked off the male flower, pulled back the petals and ... well.... they are obviously male and female..... so I err.... did what i thought was natural LOL :lol: :lol: I hope they enjoyed it :lol:
Thanks elliceh Thanks elliceh for my welcome yesteday, My account diserpered so I I've tryed again, this is a great site reading all the good ideas.Hop all gos well and happy gardening
Gardenglen.. the things you are refering to, might not be lady beetles, there is a beetle which kindof looks like a lady bettle, it is slightly larger, orange with black spots, but has more spots... yes, they eat leaves.. (I squish them whenever I see one) I'll try to take some photo's in the next few days so we can compare notes.. I'm still not sure about alot of things, but I'm pretty convinced that all lady beetles are good!!!
The beetles you are talking about are 28 spot beetle - check out the following site https://www.greenharvest.com.au/pestcont ... intro.html
sorry elliceh, I hijacked your discussion onto ladybeetles etc.. i'll finish here with.. spot on wendyb, I've observed those fellows eating my pumpkins, but as far as I know all real ladybeetles are good.
thanks wendyb, and ppp, i didn't come back because though i am not a bug eggspurt i do know what is what in the zoo, in organic gardening there are good bugs and there are bad bugs same with ladybeetles. so if i don't have any powdery mildew then what would my ladybeetles be eating apart from the pumpkin etc.,. leaves? len
settle petal!! There are the bad ones that eat leaves, but the little yellow ones are not them! And they do seem to favour hanging around on the mildewy leaves - perhaps this is why you don't have any mildew!
g'day richard, do you mean my avator pic'? that is a peregrine falcon, about my most favoured of all birds, though it is hard to choose as it is only things like ferel crows and indian mynah's that i don't like. also i found of of recent times the falcon is on the family crest. len
