Culinary ginger – post-blooms

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After flowering, the flower head changed colour.

It’s been almost 2 months since I shared those lovely photos of the flowers of the culinary ginger plant. Since that time, even more of those beautiful deep red flowers bloomed on the flower head – sometimes in pairs, but usually individually. Once the plant was done flowering, the flower head (for want of a proper name) began to take on an orange tinge. The colour deepened more and more, and I waited to see if it would become as colourful as the flowers.

It was not to be.

What you see in the picture was as orange as it got. I don’t know why it did this, but obviously it had served it’s purpose. A few days later, I found the flower head on the ground because the succulent stem had broken near the base. Perhaps one day I’ll know why the plant behaves this way. After all, the sites I’ve visited have said that the flowers of this plant don’t really do anything. But nothing happens without a reason in nature, does it?

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The red zinnia flower opens

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One of my Zinnia plants finally matured enough to put out its first flower, and I finally learned what colour the flowers are – red. This plant was grown from the handful of seeds I got from DG’s garden, and was the sole survivor of that lot of plants grown, no thanks to the snails. :(

On the bright side – and I do mean bright – take a look at these pictures:

The first bud forms.

The flower begins to open.

The flower opens - what a gorgeous red!

The flower finishes opening.

Zinnias are composite flowers. This means that the flower heads are comprised of many small flowers. Yes, even though you think you’re looking at a single flower, there is actually a cluster of smaller flowers in the centre:

Disc flowers in the centre of the zinnia bloom.

The outer petals comprise the ray flower and those in the middle are the disc flowers – and the latter are the ones that will yield me seeds. More flowers = more seeds! 8)

It’s always a good day when I learn something new!

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To bee or not to bee…

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Hive under construction.

We recently noticed a hive of activity (pun intended) in our old mango tree. A swarm of insects was busily constructing a new home along one of the branches, and we were wondering whether or not to let them proceed.

After learning that they were honey bees and not wasps or other territorial, easily aggravated stinging insects, we decided to leave them alone. A few people advised us otherwise, but these were our reasons for our decision:

Honey bees don’t attack people unless their territory is under attack. This hive is up in a tree, and we never go climbing around in the tree, so they shouldn’t feel threatened by us.

Honey bees are great pollinators. As a gardener, I welcome all the help I can get from Nature.

Honey bees produce honey. I may never get to taste the honey from this particular hive, but then again, I just might… Who knows? :)

Honey bee approaching flowers of the curry leaf tree.

Honey bees are becoming extinct around the world, and I am pro-nature. We shouldn’t kill or remove them on the possibility that they could harm us.

Besides, this is not the first time we’ve had a bee hive around here. It is, however, the closest I’ve ever seen one, thanks to the camera zoom. On one occasion, a hive was built on the side of the house; another one was up high in our old apple mango tree. Neither of them were noticed until much later when they were already abandoned. We also haven’t had any incidents with bee stings since I was a kid, which was… quite some time ago. :| So I have hopes that the bees will once again live in quiet harmony with us.

One last reason to leave the honey bees alone: as a friend said, it’s lucky to have them around! That may be a superstitious way of looking at it, but bees are industrious and a hive can be considered a symbol of prosperity. I can live with that.

© 2010 curiousgardener.com All rights reserved.


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Tomato time

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Homegrown tomato just off the vine.

So, I wondered, when was I supposed to pluck the tomatoes from the vine? I read that they should be allowed to ripen on the vine, and so I left them alone, expecting them to turn to a nice, deep red/orange before I picked them.

From pale green, they began to blush salmon pink, then turned a slightly deeper pink. They still had tinges of green on them, so I figured they needed to remain on the vine for a bit longer.

Nuh uh.

When they’re ripe enough, they’ll drop off themselves – and on the ground is where I found a few of them before I got wiser. Now when I see them mostly deep orange, I give a tiny tug to see if the fruit will detach itself. If it pops off with no resistance, I take it; if it doesn’t, I wait half a day before trying again. Sometimes the fruit still has tinges of green, which give me the impression that it’s not ready yet. But the tug test works best.

So how do these large cherry tomatoes taste? Well, like normal tomatoes, thankfully! They’re great in salads or eaten alone, and now that I know they taste good, I can’t wait for the other plants to mature as well. My next experiment with the plants will be to grow different types of basil around them, because tomatoes and basil are supposed to be great companion plants. Now for more sweet basil seeds to sprout…

© 2010 curiousgardener.com All rights reserved.


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