Zucchini Love Triangle Saga Continues

Since my last post, my zucchini have grown larger, survived the collapse of one entire section of leaves due to weight and yet another strong rainstorm with high winds. The current problem is zucchini shape. The fruit is not straight and cylindrical and slightly tapered at the stem like it's supposed to be. It's downright narrow at the stem and fat on the flower end.

My oddly shaped zucchini

Now, I've read that bad pollination can cause the zucchini to be thicker at the stem and narrower at the flower end, but I have no idea how I managed to get things the other way. Could it be that my zucchini were pollinated too much?

In checking around, I found this post that explains poor zucchini pollination. These two statements intrigued me:

If there isn't enough pollen to fertilize all the seeds the portion of the fruit that wasn't fertilized will grow disproportional to the rest of the fruit because the seed are not enlarging.

 In zucchini (and likely others) there are two types of pollen those with fast growing pollen tubes and slow growing pollen tubes. When there is a lot of pollen all the seeds are pollinated by fast growing pollen tubes. When there is a small load of pollen the fast and slow tubes can compete and if there isn't enough of either then the zucchini is pollinated from the stem end to the flower end. I know it seems strange the portion of the zucchini closest to the flower is the last to be pollinated.

My best guess given what I have read is that my zucchini started out underpollinated. When I hand pollinated the female flowers, I may have been late. Late meaning that the plant grew unpollinated or underpollinated and then I zapped it with more pollen toward the end. A guess anyway.

On another site, I found a suggestion that might be of value to my low bee activity balcony container garden:

But remember, you can pick zucchinis the day after the flower opens, and eat the tiny fruit. They are much tastier this way, and pollination is then not needed. That's the way to go with zucchinis.

My next question is, is my oddly shaped zucchini rendered inedible? The answer I found is that if it's bitter, don't eat it. Bitter zucchini contains toxins called cucurbitacins. High levels of cucurbitacins can cause an array of unpleasant symptoms. In zucchini, high levels of cucurbitacins are genetic, and not caused by environmental factors like soil pH or fertility. So, it seems that accidental cross-pollination with wild cucurbits (such as inedible gourds) may be the culprit, not under or over pollination. That being the case, it's unlikely my zucchini will make me sick--only if there is a problem with the seeds due to accidental cross-pollination,, but in any event, I am sort of afraid to try it.

It's a Girl

Finally, a female zucchini flower is sprouting:

When the flower opens, I can pollinate it with the boys in the fridge.

SYMZF Seeks SYFZF for Romance and More

This blog post is rated PG-13 for mildy sexual content.

I never thought I'd become the Dr. Ruth of zucchini, but it looks like that's where this is going. If you read yesterday's post, you know my zucchini are having problems in the garden version of a bedroom.

So, I went out bright and early this morning when the zucchini flowers were open and before it started to rain. To my disappointment, there were only two open flowers and they were both male:

My Two Zucchini Boys

I can see they are male because they have stamens rather than pistils. Some flowers have both (likely to the dismay of the Christian right), but zucchini flowers have one or the other.

There were a few tightly closed flowers that also looked male as there were no swollen zucchinis-to-be on the business end of them.

Since there are also some new buds waiting to bloom, I decided to cut off the two male flowers, bag them and refrigerate them for the day when I get a female flower to pollinate. I could eat them as flowers, deep fried or stuffed and baked, but I decided to wait it out in hopes of getting real zucchini that I intend to use for my famous zucchini bread with chocolate chips.

Sex in the Garden: Male Zucchini: All Flowers No Squash

I had big failure with zucchini last year. The plants were small and I now know that I put them in too small a container. I got a few flowers and some squash started to grow, but they got all sick and mushy before they mature. It was a total loss.

This year, I used a 3 gallon container, planted 2 plants in it and got squash-plants-zilla:

Zucchini Plants are huge

The plant is beautiful. It even got lots of flowers. The problem is that the flowers are falling off and not creating any actual zucchini squash.

Part of the reason for my zucchini flower loss is storm damage. However, I have also lost flowers absent wind and rain, so I decided to do a little research. It turns out that zucchini flowers are either male or female. The male flowers produce pollen, but do not grow squash. Only female flowers create squash. My small, squishy-squash from last year could have been immature due to underpollination.

Lucky for me, all hope for this years zucchini is not lost. The male blossoms come first, bloom, throw off pollen and fall off. I may get some female blooms yet, and there are a few unopened flowers on the plant. However, I still might not get any zucchini if the female flowers are not sufficiently pollinated. The females need existing male flowers or enough pollen left around the plant from them. They also need bees, butterflies, wind or rain to do the actual pollination. I lack bees and butterflies on the balcony, so I might have to resort to human intervention as sorted as that may sound.

The first trick to pollinating zucchini flowers is to tell the boys from the girls. The second trick is to figure out the easiest way to get the pollen from the male flower to the female. I found the details on this blog and zucchini are remarkably not too very dissimilar from other species.

I might be too late for my plants, but tomorrow when the remaining flowers open, I"m going to give it a looksee.

Here's what my plant should be looking like at this point (courtesy the Chicago Botanic Garden and my handy camera):

CBG has zucchini.

Another Charles Ingalls Moment or Sleepy Eye Here I Come

If you've watched your share of Little House on the Prairie, you know that Pa was always losing the crop and having to take dangerous or low paying jobs in places called Sleepy Eye or Mankado.

Well, Sleepy Eye here I come.

I lost my English pea crop and in a tragic tomato branch incident, lost 8-10 expected tomatoes.

English Peas Don't like Full Sun

Nothing but the dead and dying in
my little pea container

The seed package says full sun, but the peas died. Despite the packaging instructions, they need both shadier and cooler conditions. A farmer at the farmers market told me this morning when I bought his peas and some spinach.

The picture at the left is from last week. The pea plants looked even deader this moring, so I pulled them out. I'm going to try again in September.

When I do replant, I'm going to use a different container. I though peas were perfect for my long, narrow window box container. I planted a row and gave them a trellis upon which to climb. Peas are climbers and have cute little fingers to grab on to the trellis.

Now, I'm beginning to understand that peas need more than a jungle gym on which to climb. They need room for their height and roots below. They might just get the tomato, zucchini or pepper container after their season is over.

In their place in the window box container, I planted some lettuce and put the container in a shadier area of the balcony. Leaf lettuce needs some shade too, but has shorter roots and does pretty well in a window box container as my Red Sails has proven all summer long.

The Great Tomato Plant Tragedy of 2011

Tomato plant after unintentional
pruning of productive branch

Ok, maybe that's overstating things a bit. I know a local gardener who lost several mature Japanese Maples in the storm last week, so my tomato incident is probably nothing special. But, I feel bad about it.

I was trying to stake up the tomato plant because it was battering its neighbor, a container with 3 pepper plants (Carnival Mix Sweet Peppers). I gently picked up the offending branch and was holding onto one of the branches that forks off the main line. The fork branch snapped off. It was a productive branch holding about 8 or 10 babies, too small and green to eat.

I'm comforting myself with the notion that the plant was getting to big for its own good. After a couple of normal sized patio tomatoes, the later blossoming ones seemed smaller than patio tomatoes should be. So, maybe this is a good thing. The plant can concentrate on fewer, but better tomatoes (maybe?)

My patio tomato plant is determinant, meaning that it is not a plant known to sprall and should not require pruning. I pruned it a bit before I knew that, but I'm now of the mind that I should have pruned it more. Some of the tomatoes were getting lost in the shadow of huge unproductive leafy side branches. Now, the remaining producing branches will get more light, so I'm hopeful that my remaining tomatoes will do well. We'll see.

Other Struggling Crops
As I mentioned, I purchased some spinach at the Farmers Market this morning. My own spinach is stuggling and will not grow to any harvest-worthy size. All the plants remain tiny seedlings. Same with most of my spring onions, although one I mindlessly planted with the green beans is doing well. My inside dill is also struggling to get past seedling stage. I replanted from seed and the new seedlings are struggling as much as the older ones I pulled out.

On the Bright Side

The zucchini plants are flowering and look beautiful. I'm starting to get a second wave of Bush Blue Lake Beans. My Red Sails lettuce is regrowing off the stems I cut down after they provided me with several tasty salads. My strawberry plants runneth over with runners. My parsley has made a recovery from what appeared to be an emerging powdery mildew problem. I have several baby peppers growing and getting larger every day. AND, I ate part of one of my California red onions. Delish.

On the Indoor Bright Side
The sage has come up nicely. I've been regularly using the Rosemary, Lemon Thyme and Basil in cooking. The hibiscus blooms regularly. After attempted murder of my Purple Ruffles Basil, the mint is doing well and I've already made some tea with it. The one stem of surviving Purple Ruffles Basil continues to recover. The lavender, English and French, is growing like crazy and smells great, but is not flowering. The Lemon Balm is also doing well, but it, together with the French lavender has murdered my chamomile. I saw the same grouping at one of the local garden stores, but it was a bad idea. I'm going to try and rescue chamomile by pulling it out and replanting the surviving stems.

Hibiscus

A Very Tomato Movie

This is my very first tomato of the season.

Bolting Lettuce Means It's Salad Week

The rest of this week is going to be Salad Week. Why? Well, one reason is because after a holiday weekend of eating badly, I could use a Salad Week. However, the main reason is that my Red Sails Lettuce is ready. In fact, it's more than ready.

After many delicious salads from my lettuce, the plants have begun to bolt. Bolting is when the stems lengthen and flower. In my case, there were no flowers, but the stems got long and the leaves smaller:

The Lettuce began growing tall with smaller leaves

So, without studying the subject as my readers know I am prone to do, I cut down the stems:

Lettuce cut down

It seems to be working because a stem I cut down a couple of weeks ago has begun to grow new leaves:

Whew! New Growth.

Reading up on this problem, after the fact of course, I discovered that the lettuce gardener can stop bolting by shocking the plant into thinking it has not matured. One recommended way to shock it is to harvest the outer leaves. I had done that for past salads and it didn't work all that well to prevent bolting. The second recommended method is to dig up the plant and replant it. Here is more information on bolting.

My solution was to  cut down the plants and use the leaves. I must have caught them in time because they were not bitter, a symptom of bolting.

The new growth gives me hope that I didn't do too much damage, but I'll let you know hat else happens to my lettuce.