#squash love

[aleahhelton]

Where Have All My Pollinators Gone?

This year has been pretty good so far for our gardens. Our raised boxes are flourishing and even the rows that have tough soil are doing better than I thought they would. Our lettuce harvest has been abundant with romaine and bib heads that are enormous. Even with the late frosts and some bug issues, the majority of the garden is looking really good. Other than treatments with some compost tea…

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[kristinamercedes]

Squash Porn

     If you have a garden, you love your pollinators. Honeybees, native bees, wasps, butterflies...without them, our gardens would be lush and green but would never produce fruit or vegetables for our needs. As perfect as our pollinators are, however, sometimes they fail to do their job; inclement weather, more tempting blooms a few yards away...whatever the reason, our pollinator friends don't pay their visit and we're left seeing those flowers shrivel up and fall off.

     For some crops, hand pollination by the gardener is a feasible option, and one that should be explored - if you fancy a little plant love. This year, our squash and pumpkin were hurting; by late July, we only had one fruit of each set and growing - not an acceptable harvest, as far as I'm concerned. We want to be embarrassingly overwhelmed by gourds! So in steps the matchmaker - me, the gardener. Get ready to make some sweet, sweet love to your plants...

     Before pouring a glass of wine and cranking up the Barry White, first determine that you have two mature blossoms, one of each sex. The female squash blossom (above) can be identified by the potential fruit below the blossom; the male (below) is an equally beautiful saffron-yellow flower but it is attached to a long thin stem.

     Pick the male flower and remove the outer petals (above). The beauty of the flower has done it's job: it has attracted you, the pollinator, to it's reproductive potential, ready and willing to spread its seed. What's left is a little knob, technically called a stamen, whose tip is covered in pollen, called an anther, just waiting to be distributed to the female flowers and complete its purpose in life (but whatever you do, just don't ever tell the male flower that its knob is little).

     Using the stamen as a mini paintbrush, gently spread the pollen throughout the insides of the female flower until no pollen remains. Think like a pollinator, whose hairy bodies usually transport the pollen between flowers: go up each side of the female blossom's pistil, and between and around and the female stigma (she has one too). Kinky, I know.

     That's all there is to it. The female flower will wilt the next day, shrivel up and turn brown. Just leave it be. Compost the male flower, and sit back and wait.  

And then, a couple weeks later...

     Congratulations! It's neither boy nor girl, but it's a growing, developing fruit that will be ready to pick and eat in no time.

Enjoy feasting on your plant's offspring!