Squah Blooms

There must be 15 open blooms on my crooked-neck squash plants this morning! It's so exciting! The temperature has dropped, it rained hard yesterday, and today it's only in the 50's (rare for May in Georgia). After dropping the kids at school, I took a toothpick and went outside to try and cross-pollinate my squashies. Most of the blooms were female, with little tiny fruit on the end, but I found about 4 - 5 male blooms and scraped pollen off them, then transferred it into the female blooms. With the weather being cool today, there's very little insect movement and it's the bees that generally handle the pollination of fruit.

I don't think the blooms stay open but two days, anyway, a very short time, so I was concerned. We should know in another couple of days if my efforts worked. Here's hoping!

I finished up my blackberry syrup last night and made 3 jars of blackberry jelly. There was enough left in the pan for a small jar for us to eat. The children had it with breakfast. Between the blueberry jelly I made in April, the strawberry jam I made in April, the mint jelly from earlier in May, and the blackberry from yesterday, I have quite the stock of homemade jams and jellies. Now I'm ready to branch out into green beans, which I'm hoping to can today. My cousin in Canada (Calvin's sister, Kathy), has sent me a recipe and some of her tips. I cleaned and sorted the beans last night to get them all ready.

This is so much fun. And I should know enough by the time my garden is producing to be able to put up my own vegetables this year . . . if we stay in town long enough.