Helping Mother Nature with Pollination

One of the biggest frustrations when planting a garden that you have worked and cared for is when you have plants that don't produce.  I have seen this happen firsthand with squash and cucumbers especially.  One thing you can do to help mother nature along is to hand pollinate your plants!
Squash and cucumbers have male and female flowers, and generally the male flowers seem to appear first. 

                                                  Here is a male Cucumber flower:

And a Male squash flower.  You can see the anther full of pollen in the middle:

The Female flowers look like they have a baby fruit behind it, this is the ovary full of eggs waiting to be fertilized.

                                           Female cucumber:

 

Female Zucchini Squash:

To pollinate squash plants, since they have a bigger flower, you can simply take off the male flower, strip the petals to expose the Anther , and touch it to the female flower's Stigma like this:

  

With smaller flowers like the cucumber, you can use a cotton swab.   Just touch the cotton swab to the male's anther like this:

 

 and then touch it to a female flower's stigma like this:

 

Congratulations!  You have just pollinated your plants!  This can be especially helpful in areas where either weather or a lack of pollinators like bees affect pollination.   I hope these little tips help your gardens grow! 

Meredith

Spring Preparations!

Winter has been crazy this year, but here we are, March 1st, and we are already preparing for Spring in our backyard!  We have started seedlings in the greenhouse, and they are growing away! 

Here are some of our newly transplanted tomato starts.  We have Brandywine, Roma, Cherokee Purple, Dixie Golden, Mortgage Lifter, and Blue Berries cherry tomato varieties.

Herbs have been started too, like these little Wild Zaatar Oregano seedlings above.

                                      

I am trying out some flowers, and we should have some for sale this spring and summer.  Marigold pictured above.  I also started some Apple Blossom Snapdragons and Balsam (camillia flowered mix)

 

 

And we will have loads of Strawberry plants for sale!

 

                                     


I love the colorfulness of Rainbow Chard.  We are growing this for its good looks and for the chickens to nibble on!
                                       

 

 

As you can see, the greenhouse is filling up nicely!  We have been working outside the greenhouse too, building beds for our garden and preparing for Olski's Heirloom Nursery to be ready for business!  I will be posting in the coming week with all the details about getting your plant starts from us.  I am finalizing which farmers markets we will be selling at, and providing a list of everything we will be selling.  please follow us here, and at www.olskisheirloomnursery.com

  for all the details.  We are on Facebook and Twitter too!

Happy Almost Spring!

Meredith