To Bee or not to Bee............

Howdy,

Welcome to my Dubai based gardening blog about growing vegetables in containers in the UAE and the Arabian Gulf region.

Ok, so I think I'm a comedian.  Anyway, I recently received a comment the other day on an older blog I did in April 2011 - What vegetables should you plant.    Bradder asked:  Hi, I have a question for you - I was wondering whether I have to pollinate my flowers by hand?  I haven't seen much in the way of bees etc (I'm in the Springs) and concerned now my aubergines and tomatoes are flowering that they will come to naught!  Thanks.

This brings up a point that I would like to mention.  Do not kill ANY honey bees as they are having a tough time around the world surviving for some mysteries reason as I have blogged about in the past here and here.   If some bees decide to make a home in your garden - just leave them alone and they won't bother you.  The little local arabian bees are very docile and you will learn to be able to get very close to them to observe them and they don't mind.  The only exception to this is if you have small children that can reach a bee hive and are too young to understand that the bees can hurt them - then try to find a way to make them leave without killing to many of them.

So, I'll get off the soap box now.  If you do not have any bees buzzing around your vegetables flowers then YES you will need to start buzzing around  some of your vegetables yourself if you want a better harvest.  It might bee a good idea to dress the part so your plants do not get confused as to who is handling their reproductive bits.

But, before you start buzzing your vegetable plants you need to know a few things first to take the sting out of it. :-)

Seedlings Dying?

Howdy,

Welcome to my blog about growing vegetables in containers in Dubai, the UAE and/or the Arabian Gulf region.

 I received a comment some time back that I am only getting to now unfortunately.  The comment was  "waiting for ur next post eagerly since this is a good time to start potting in dxb. i usually have an issue with my seedlings that i am hoping u can help me with. my seedlings are very weak and they dont grow more than 1-2 inches after which they die. any tips? i planted flowering plants btw."

I had and still have a similar problem in that my vegetable seeds never came up and/or the seedlings are dying off. So, I thought that perhaps some of you may be having the same problems.  Let's look at some of the possible causes of this.