The chye sim are growing pretty well except for the squiggly lines across the leaves. I've to find out how to prevent this from happening.
*I've learned they are caused by leaf miners - a small fly that lays eggs which hatch and burrow their way out of the leaves. I have to remove the affected leaves to prevent more infestation.*
*I've learned they are caused by leaf miners - a small fly that lays eggs which hatch and burrow their way out of the leaves. I have to remove the affected leaves to prevent more infestation.*
Most of my tomato plants (I've got 9) are flowering but I am beginning to wonder about pollination. I don't see any bees in my garden, not than I would like to see too many, but they can come in useful at this point in time. I have listened to the advice of the good uncles at the seed shop and removed all the low branches so that the plant can concentrate on growing fruits instead of producing more beautiful leaves.
You can do manual pollination. That's what I did for my capsicum plants. =)
ReplyDeleteI was thinking of doing that too but somehow my chilli plants managed to flower and turn into fruit without any help.
ReplyDeleteI think chillis don't need manual pollination. They self-pollinate. Capsicums have a 50% success rate with self-pollination and about an 80% rate if I manually pollinate with a cotton bud.
ReplyDeleteA friend on the MyFolia website had to manually pollinate ALL her tomato plants before they'd fruit.
Oh wow, thanks for the advice. I shall go pollinate my plants soon!
ReplyDeleteAnd oh, oh! If your tomato's male flowers open without a female in sight, you can pluck the males and store them in a ziplock and in the freezer and wait for the females to open before pollinating them. That way, you won't have missed opportunities.=)
ReplyDeleteOh, thanks for the tip. Yesterday my plant fell due to the rain and while making it upright, I broke one of the branches with flowers. Heart pain!
ReplyDeleteI was waiting to pollinate my pumpkin but funny there were no female flowers for so long. Now my pumpkin plant has died.
Ouch. =(
ReplyDeleteI'm hoping that the sunny weather will return very soon, and that all our plants will be able to grow better.