Helping Mother Nature with Pollination

One of the biggest frustrations when planting a garden that you have worked and cared for is when you have plants that don't produce.  I have seen this happen firsthand with squash and cucumbers especially.  One thing you can do to help mother nature along is to hand pollinate your plants!
Squash and cucumbers have male and female flowers, and generally the male flowers seem to appear first. 

                                                  Here is a male Cucumber flower:

And a Male squash flower.  You can see the anther full of pollen in the middle:

The Female flowers look like they have a baby fruit behind it, this is the ovary full of eggs waiting to be fertilized.

                                           Female cucumber:

 

Female Zucchini Squash:

To pollinate squash plants, since they have a bigger flower, you can simply take off the male flower, strip the petals to expose the Anther , and touch it to the female flower's Stigma like this:

  

With smaller flowers like the cucumber, you can use a cotton swab.   Just touch the cotton swab to the male's anther like this:

 

 and then touch it to a female flower's stigma like this:

 

Congratulations!  You have just pollinated your plants!  This can be especially helpful in areas where either weather or a lack of pollinators like bees affect pollination.   I hope these little tips help your gardens grow! 

Meredith

Spring Preparations!

Winter has been crazy this year, but here we are, March 1st, and we are already preparing for Spring in our backyard!  We have started seedlings in the greenhouse, and they are growing away! 

Here are some of our newly transplanted tomato starts.  We have Brandywine, Roma, Cherokee Purple, Dixie Golden, Mortgage Lifter, and Blue Berries cherry tomato varieties.

Herbs have been started too, like these little Wild Zaatar Oregano seedlings above.

                                      

I am trying out some flowers, and we should have some for sale this spring and summer.  Marigold pictured above.  I also started some Apple Blossom Snapdragons and Balsam (camillia flowered mix)

 

 

And we will have loads of Strawberry plants for sale!

 

                                     


I love the colorfulness of Rainbow Chard.  We are growing this for its good looks and for the chickens to nibble on!
                                       

 

 

As you can see, the greenhouse is filling up nicely!  We have been working outside the greenhouse too, building beds for our garden and preparing for Olski's Heirloom Nursery to be ready for business!  I will be posting in the coming week with all the details about getting your plant starts from us.  I am finalizing which farmers markets we will be selling at, and providing a list of everything we will be selling.  please follow us here, and at www.olskisheirloomnursery.com

  for all the details.  We are on Facebook and Twitter too!

Happy Almost Spring!

Meredith

 

 

 

Progress!

The last few weeks have been busy in the backyard!  The awesome news is that the greenhouse is basically done with the exception of a couple of minor tweaks! 

You may remember this from the last post:

 

here it is getting sides and a top

 

(mostly)  Finished Product!

 

A quick shot of inside so far.  We have clean up and some more tables to build but it is on its way!

 

I am so proud that with the exception of the plastic on the top, everything else used to build the greenhouse was upcycled from things we already had torn down in the yard.  I love it when we can use what we already have! 

 

Ok, So here are a few shots of some other ongoing projects:

 

Rosemary I am growing to eventually do cuttings to propagate.  Eventually these will be offered for sale.

 

Some collard seedlings Robert is getting ready to move outside.

 

Um, yes, we are going to have a ton of Strawberry plants for sale, both June bearing and everbearing alpine type.  They will be $1 each.  transplants were done with some very very established plants.

 

beside the greenhouse will be most of our expanded garden space.  Cant wait to get it all planned out.  Even though we will be offering plants, I may offer surplus produce from our garden in very limited quantities when we have it.  We'll call it "from the twins garden".

 

 

We also have some long narrow beds along the fence.  Okra and tomatoes will be planted here.

 

Robert is trying to grow some collards here right now.

 

That's all for now!  Cant wait to see where this adventure takes us!  As always, check us out over at www.olskisheirloomnursery.com, as well as following us on facebook and twitter for all the latest news!

 

Thanks, Meredith

Back at it!

Wow!  I can't believe its been two years since I last touched this blog.  Now is the perfect time to get back to it though.  We have decided to start a new business, Olski's Heirloom Nursery, and I am so excited about it.  We are going to focus on selling heirloom vegetable starts, herbs, and flowers at local Farmer's Markets with the hope of eventually selling at some other local businesses as well.  This will be a family project, with everyone helping and there is so much to do right now.  We are working on a greenhouse right now, and making all the preparations to run our business out of our backyard! 

 The start of the greenhouse, the frame which was upcycled from a shed we tore down.

 One of Robert's ideas for tables in the greenhouse. 

 Frame is up, and Robert is working hard!

 

We are using some bricks we had in the yard as a floor for the greenhouse.  We don't need it, but it's a good way to put the bricks to use and will still drain well.  

 

 

                                    
The chickens wanted to help out too!

In addition to all the preparations to build our business, we are also really trying to make the most out of our backyard.  We built a new shed this summer complete with new housing for the chickens in it.  We are working on things like new compost bins and a bigger garden, in addition to general cleanup.  We hope to show people that urban farming is fun and useful, and that it doesn't take a huge piece of land to practice sustainable living. 

Until next time,

Meredith

Cooking from the Garden!

So our garden is definitely starting to grow!  The last couple of days we have enjoyed cooking with some of the things we have picked! 

These green tomatoes, picture taken a couple weeks ago, got bigger..

And became yummy Fried Green Tomatoes!!!!


These are the first few yellow squach and zucchini from the garden..

And I made 3 loaves of zucchini bread today!  We will probably cook the squash in the next couple of days..2 more wil be ready very soon...

Now people that know Robert and I know that he does most of the cooking, and always has  It is so exciting to me (and to him!) that as a result of growing fruits and vegetables, I want to spend time in the kitchen!  Sam & zoe are enjoying trying some new foods as well, which is wonderful!



Hen-side the Beltline Tour D'Coop

On May 21, Robert and I (and Zoe too, Sam opted to Stay with his Gigi) were able to check out the Hen-side the Beltline Tour D'Coop in Raleigh http://www.tourdcoop.com/
This is an annual tour of urban chicken coops in the Raleigh area, that raises funds for Urban ministries of Wake County.  There were 19 coops on the tour, and we saw 10 of them!  Here are a few shots from the day:

This coop was made from all reused materials claimed from a farm scrap pile.

This coop was also built from reused materials, and the roof is slate salvaged from an orphanage in
Charlotte!

We saw some awesome gardens like this one:

This was my favorite house!  Huge veggie garden, flower and herb gardens, bees, mushroom logs, fruit trees, a zipline and a clay oven!

Here is the clay oven..we are soooo building one of these in the future!

And some beautiful chickens!

Zoe was feeding cherries to these Barred Rock hens!

  if you check out the website, they even offer a chicken keeping 101 class (I took the class last year) that is a very informative "must do" if you are thinking about keeping chickens.  We had a very fun day and we  will definitely be doing this tour again in the future.

We have Blueberries (and a few other random thoughts)!!

Aren't they beautiful?  The blueberries have been getting ripe over the last 2 days..this is what I got this morning...yum.....

and little strawberries..they are plants from last year that did not do so well..I have been calling these "chicken strawberries"   because they are so small and the chickens love them!

We have two little limes on the key lime tree...tiny and cute...

Tomatoes! 

Can you see the baby Zucchini?

I spent some time weeding this morning.  Robert helped me and we weeded quietly while Sam & Zoe played in the yard.  It was surprisingly calming.  We both sat there weeding away and Robert tells me that just like the weeding today, when we get bees next year we will have to be calm and deliberate when working with them.  Is he trying to prepare me ahead of time or what?  I am terrified of bees, and I think he is scared that I will get stung due to a freak out.  I do want to face my fear and not have the twins scared of bees like me.  We will see when the time comes I guess.   I am determined to turn my backyard into someting wonderful, and bees are a must...