August "garden" update

The garden, such as it is, is doing better than expected.

The 5 sunflower seedlings are now 2 surviving plants. "Mammoth" sunflowers do not prefer life in a not-so-big flower pot (say, 12-inch clay). They're growing more sideways than up, even after being moved to the sunnier back deck, but one has bloomed this week. Last year we got six stunted seeds from two plants; I wonder how well we'll do this year?

The 5 miniature bell pepper plants are going great guns. They apparently are okay with being in a 14-inch or so flower pot, and moving them out back agreed with them. They've been blooming like crazy, and last time I counted, there were 11 peppers in progress. Granted, most of them are marble size at the moment, but it's better than I'd hoped. They're a mix of green, red, and chocolate bells, I think, but I'm not sure which actually grew.

The pumpkins - miniature Jack Be Nimbles - are sort of iffy right now. Three plants survived, they seem marginally okay growing in a pot, and they're actually blooming a lot. However, the flowers are all male flowers so far - you have to have female flowers to get actual little pumpkins. And apparently I'll be hand-pollinating them if we ever get a female flower, since I doubt our neighborhood has a lot of squash bees or whatever. I'm wondering if they'll ever come up with a female flower, though. They've been blooming for 3 weeks, and the sites I read online said that usually you get male flowers for a week or so before the female flowers show up. I have fertilized them, since the pot's so small. Maybe they need more. Or less. Need to Google "pumpkins with no female flowers" or something similar. The wicked heat may also be an issue, since it seems that pumpkins don't like to set fruit when it's over 90 or so. Har - it's been 90+ here lately, heat indices over 100. I moved the pot into a shadier spot; we'll see if that helps. If not, I may have to buy a little pumpkin and tie it on to encourage El Burrito. Or call the peppers pumpkins and paint them orange.

The peppers are also not shy or subtle about saying "Water us!!" either. They go nice and droopy, sort of like my oxalis, but perk up within an hour of drinking. I've been watering every other day now, so they won't be stressed by the dryness.