Summer Gardening: Squash Enigma and Keyhole Garden

Did you ever wonder why some squash blossoms produce a fruit, and others don't?  The reason is that male flowers don't produce a fruit, though the flower looks just like a female.  A female flower, when fertilized via bees from nearby male flowers, starts growing a fruit at the base of the flower. You cannot control how many males or females your plants will produce. Sometimes they are mostly male and you get very little produce. That is what happened at our community garden!

We harvested okra and many flavors of basil leaves.  The keyhole garden is doing fine, as long as we keep it under a tent of shade cloth during the hot summer here in Phoenix. We have two more keyholes to fill and plant this fall! Here is how we filled the first keyhole garden: Keyhole Garden.

Hover over the photos to see the captions. Click on the photos to see them larger.

Everyone is welcome to join us at 7 A.M. in the summer on Sundays. Informal, fun, free, take some food home with you.  Here is where we meet: Location

Lots of male squash flowers like this, that don't produce fruit

Here is a female squash with the fruit starting to grow at the base of the flower

Okra is ready to pick

Okra

The keyhole garden plants are looking good!

We harvested many different flavors of basil from the keyhole garden

We have two more keyhole gardens to fill and plant this fall

A volunteer steps into the keyhole indentation and drops garden waste into the central wire basket which makes compost