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Give squash flowers a hand

Sacramento Digs Gardening
BY Debbie Arrington PUBLISHED JUL 7, 2020

See the largest open squash flower on the right? That's a female flower. All the flowers on the long stems are male. Fully open male blossoms work best for hand-pollinating. Best time to do this is in the early morning. (Photos: Kathy Morrison)

Use a paintbrush to hand-pollinate

Tomato vines aren’t the only plants in the vegetable garden that could use a hand in pollination. Squash, pumpkins, cucumbers and melons are having problems, too.

Again, this is mostly weather-related. Bees and other pollinators don’t like to work in hot weather.

Or the bees may be having a hard time finding your squash and melon vines, especially if they’re surrounded by non-flowering plants.

Tomato vines may need only a gentle nudge to shake loose pollen and fertilize flowers. (See Monday's post on tomatoes .) Squash take a little more effort.

That’s because members of the cucurbit family (squash and all its cousins) have distinctly male and female flowers on the same plant. The pollen needs to get from the male blooms to the female flowers, usually with the help of bees.

When bees don’t do the job, pick up a paint brush and give pollination a hand.

A soft-bristled artist’s paintbrush, such as a watercolor brush, is perfect for this job.

Melon blossoms are smaller than squash ones but work

on the same principle.

First, determine which flowers are which. The female flowers have an obvious swelling at their base. That’s the baby fruit, waiting to be pollinated. In the center of that flower, the female stigma will be prominent and clearly visible.

The male flowers have no swelling at their base and they're filled with pollen-topped stamens.

Take the paintbrush and lightly swish it around those bright yellow stamens. The brush will quickly be covered with yellow dust; that’s the pollen.

Then, open up the female flower and gently stroke the stigma with the pollen-covered brush. That’s it; you’ve pollinated the flower.

Do this over and over until all the female flowers have been “dusted” with your pollen paintbrush.

If you don’t have a brush, try this alternative: Remove a male flower and pull back the petals to expose the stamens. Then, use the stamens to “paint” their pollen onto the female flower’s stigma.

Either way, baby squash (or melons or cucumbers or pumpkins) will soon be on the way.

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Keywords:

Sacramento pollination summer weather gardening summer garden bees heat summer vegetables summer squash cucurbits pollinators vegetable gardening summer

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Garden Checklist for week of Jan. 12

Once the winds die down, it’s good winter gardening weather with plenty to do:

* Prune, prune, prune. Now is the time to cut back most deciduous trees and shrubs. The exceptions are spring-flowering shrubs such as lilacs.

* Now is the time to prune fruit trees. (The exceptions are apricot and cherry trees, which are susceptible to a fungus that causes dieback. Save them until summer.) Clean up leaves and debris around the trees to prevent the spread of disease.

* Prune roses, even if they’re still trying to bloom. Strip off any remaining leaves, so the bush will be able to put out new growth in early spring.

* Clean up leaves and debris around your newly pruned roses and shrubs. Put down fresh mulch or bark to keep roots cozy.

* After the wind stops, apply horticultural oil to fruit trees to control scale, mites and aphids. Oils need 24 hours of dry weather after application to be effective.

* This is also the time to spray a copper-based fungicide to peach and nectarine trees to fight leaf curl. (The safest effective fungicides available for backyard trees are copper soap -- aka copper octanoate -- or copper ammonium, a fixed copper fungicide. Apply either of these copper products with 1% horticultural oil to increase effectiveness.)

* When forced bulbs sprout, move them to a cool, bright window. Give them a quarter turn each day so the stems will grow straight.

* Browse through seed catalogs and start making plans for spring and summer.

* Divide daylilies, Shasta daisies and other perennials.

* Cut back and divide chrysanthemums.

* Plant bare-root roses, trees and shrubs.

* Transplant pansies, violas, calendulas, English daisies, snapdragons and fairy primroses.

* In the vegetable garden, plant fava beans, head lettuce, mustard, onion sets, radicchio and radishes.

* Plant bare-root asparagus and root divisions of rhubarb.

* In the bulb department, plant callas, anemones, ranunculus and gladioli for bloom from late spring into summer.

* Plant blooming azaleas, camellias and rhododendrons. If you’re shopping for these beautiful landscape plants, you can now find them in full flower at local nurseries.

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