Male vs Female Flowers and Hand Pollinating

Before I took an interest in plants and growing my own fruits and veggies, I had no real idea how they came to me.  Don't get me wrong... I knew the basics of needing bees and the plants needed to be pollinated.  But if you told me there were male and female flowers, I'd have looked at you with quite the blank face.   The more research I did, I quickly came to realize that some kinds of plants would produce separate male and female flowers.  And with that I discovered that it might be hard for me to get any kind of harvest if I didn't have bees....  UNLESS....  I had pollinated myself!  Whoa!

Before you can hand pollinate, however, you need to know how to tell which flowers are which.  In MY garden, the plants that will produce males and females are my squash, zucchinis, and my melons.

Once your plant starts putting out flowers, you'll need to look at the underside, or the base of the flower.  If it is swollen with a bulb attached, that is your female.  If there is just a straight, skinny stem leading up to the flower then that is your male.

Here are photos of my flowering melons and zucchinis.

Zucchini

Sugar Baby Melon

Notice how both of the females have a swollen bit under the flower.  That will be the fruit of the plant so long as it is properly pollinated!  Now, what if you don't have many bees?  You can easily and successfully pollinate your plant yourself.   I take a soft old nail brush (something light and fluffy, not too stiff) and swirl it around the open male flower to pick up the pollen.  Then, find an open female flower and swirl that same brush around inside it.  This will place the pollen properly so it can now grow the fruit at its base.  If you have enough bees and you see them going from each plant you don't have to worry so much about doing this.  I have stopped hand pollinating because I have a lot of bees that have found my yard and are doing the work for me.

*Random Advise:  Don't panic if at first you see nothing but a bunch of male flowers.  Typically, the plants will send out a bunch of male flowers first and then a few weeks later you'll start seeing some females pop into the mix as well. :-)

Gardening Update

I had briefly mentioned previously that I may end up trying my hand at growing some fruits and veggies this spring/summer.  Well, I did.   Everything started with one little strawberry plant I brought home.  From there, my obsession with growing stuff began.

Currently, everything is growing... and growing well. I have strawberry plants, squash, zucchini, tomatoes, okra, a purple bell pepper, and a red bell pepper.  I also have my small pots of herbs: parsley, chives, basil, and lavender.

I haven't been able to harvest from all of my plants yet.  The strawberries and herbs are really the only things I've been eating from.  ...and on that note, for the time being my strawberries have stopped putting out flowers.  They are everbearing variety so I can only assume they've stopped because the heat has gotten beyond their ideal point. I'm thinking once fall rolls around and the temperatures cool back down I will be getting more.

For now, I'll just simply show you a couple of the small fruits that are growing.  :-)

This is a sugar baby watermelon.  This was about a week ago, so it is even larger now!

This is a purple bell pepper.  It is just a wee thing right now, so it is still small and green.

I think I will touch on hand pollinating in a later post, too!  I started out with zero bee activity so I was hand pollinating many of my plants.  However, several kinds of bees (from bumblebees, to sweat bees, to honey bees!) have found their way to my yard and have been helping pollinate all of my plants for me!  YAY FOR BEES!

This was one of the first bees I spotted!  He was hanging out on my melon flowers.