"Are you pollinating them?"
"What do you mean?", she asked.
"You stick your finger in the male flower and then insert it in the female flower and you'll get a squash.", I told her.
"How do you know this stuff, Michele?"
Don't we all know this?
This is a female flower. It has the undeveloped squash on it.
I didn't have a good picture of a male flower today, but this is an old male flower. It has no squash. The pollen needs to go from the male flower to the female flower If you live anywhere besides Las Vegas, bees will do this for you. If you live in a subdivision, besides mine and I'll get to my bee/neighbor issues another day, you can pollinate your own squash. I don't have to do that because I have 1,000,000,000 killer, Africanized bees living next door in my neighbor's hive, so they take care of my squash. I've got squash up to my ears and the size of bats.
Before I had killer bees living next door, I just sent the kids out to the garden to do it for me. Now I just send the kids out and hope they don't get stung to death.
So there's my gardening tip for the day.
My lesbian friend, Andi, was like, "Wait. You put your finger in the male flower and stick it in the female flower? I'm so confused."
How can you tell the difference between a male flower and a female flower? I had no luck with squash last year, lots of flowers but no babies.
ReplyDeletelaura jean
Ha ha, I never knew that. In Michigan the bees do a good job because I usually end up with so much zucchini I am giving it away and having zucchini daily all summer and fall.
ReplyDeleteYou are out of control!!!
ReplyDeleteAndi- You KNOW I am! LMAO!
ReplyDeleteThe male flowers just sit there and do nothing, while the female flowers are busy all day with cooking, laundry and cleaning up after the baby flowers. I think that's right, anyway!
ReplyDeleteAndi- just be glad she isn't sending Greg out to do that in his rainbow tie dye tee shirt- talk about blasphemy
ReplyDeleteOk so I was just reading this post while my husband came downstairs. He is crazy over his garden. He saw your picture and came to the computer and read this. He just put his shoes on and I asked what he was doing. He said he'd be right back he was heading out to the garden to have sex with his flowers. ha ha If this works I may never get him out of his garden! :-)
ReplyDeleteRabia's comment is my new favorite internet comment ever.
ReplyDeleteMy DH, former farm kid, says there's no such thing as male and female flowers. He must have failed FFA class. We have had years with lots of flowers and no cucumbers, but we seldom see a bee, either. People here are so afraid of Africanized bees, they poison everything.
ReplyDeleteAnon- you tell Farm Hubby that all cucurbits have a male and female flower. So anything in the squash or gourd family has this unique pollination process.
ReplyDeletehttp://www.ianrpubs.unl.edu/pages/publicationD.jsp?publicationId=845
Wow, learned something new today. Who knew plant sex was actually real? Hmmm we are having apple tree problems here, I have the female, my neighbor had the male, maybe we need to investigate their sex life.
ReplyDelete