Who is responsible for pollinating courgette and marrow flowers?

Old wives discuss transferring pollen with feathers or cotton buds. But this is not necessary - the bees and other insects will pollinate courgette flowers much more efficiently than humans.

Click this link for information on how to grow courgettes.

To allow the bees and insects do their job of pollinating the female flowers, the gardener should lure the insects into the garden by making it attractive for them. Growing colourful flowers in the vegetable garden will draw bees in. It is useful to keep several pots of annual flower plants in the veg garden and the green house.

Then it will be the bees and other insects who pollinate the courgette flowers!

courgette

Here are 15 tips for grow your own (GYO) vegetables in an hour a week.

An hour a week is not much to pay for a garden full of vegetables ready to be picked as required!

To make the most of an hour of gardening, & to give maximum return on effort, the hour has to be spent efficiently, which means:

• planning &
• the right style of gardening Read More »
  vegetable garden

Why are potatoes ridged up with earth?

• Earthing up potatoes stops the light getting to the growing tubers. If potatoes catch light, they turn green and they should not be eaten.

• Earthing up potatoes into a ridge improves the yield of potatoes. Read More »
  new potatoes plant potatoes

How long should earthing up potatoes continue?

If the potato row is 30 inches wide, the ridge is usually about 6 inches above soil level. Any higher and the soil runs down as there is a natural angle of repose.

Read More »

plant potatoes

Many gardeners germinate vegetable seeds indoors so that when it is time to plant vegetables outdoors they already have a head start on their garden. There is nothing complicated about planting seeds indoors. These nine tips show how simple it is. Read More »

plant seed vegetable garden

Now is a good time to plant ‘cut and come again’ salads.

They can be grown in:

• containers
• window boxes
• directly in the vegetable garden

salads need to be shaded from direct sunshine in midsummer.

Thomson & Morgan has a list of “cut and come again” types:

• red Bulls Blood



• Read More »
  lettuce plant

The First True Leaves are growing on the Asparagus Peas.

The two large cotyledon leaves are still bright green, but the first true leaves are now developing - 29 days after planting the asparagus pea seeds. Read More »

asparagus pea plant

Farming Friends & TopVeg have collaborated to create a How To Grow Onions growing card. Click on the image below to enlarge the picture of the card.

The card may be downloaded, printed off and pinned to the potting shed wall as a useful reference on how to grow onions. Read More »

onion plant

Attack the weeds in the vegetable garden when they are young and very small.

If small weeds are pulled up, with a hoe or by hand, the fine roots and stems, seen in the photo above,will dry up quickly and the weeds will die. Read More »

The potatoes have started to grow as the temperature rises, and it is easy to start to ridge them up as they grow. The potato seed was planted shallowly, just covered with soil, so that it would come out quickly. When the shoots are about 12 cm above the ground, the base of the stalk is covered with soil. It does not matter if one or two of the bottom leaves are covered with soil, but the main shoot must remain uncovered.

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