A Little Zucchini Sex for You

We don’t get much time for uninterrupted talking time these days. With two talkative kids who constantly ask questions, fight and need a booboo kissed, its a rare moment when we can utter more than a three word sentence to each other. But this weekend we got a moment and what did we talk about? Oh, that’d be zucchini sex. You know, what every couple talks about in their spare time. (We seriously need to get a life!) But I thought I’d share with you our findings on zucchini sex. Mind you, these musing are only learned by observation and not by fact or science or anything reliable other than our experiences.

So I posted that beautiful picture of the zucchini blossom the other day and I expected to see a zucchini grow from it, however when I walked out into the garden yesterday it was completely dried up and dead with no sort of zucchini in store. However when I looked at the next door plant there was this below zucchini growing just fine and the flower hadn’t opened at all yet. What the heck?

Well, Scott explained that the first flower I saw was a male flower and they don’t produce zucchini, their job is to provide pollen for the female flowers. Okay, that makes sense. But then why is the female producing a zucchini when she hasn’t yet been pollenated? Well the answer, we think is that its a hybrid. Heirloom females do need the male’s pollen to produce an offspring, but it looks like hybrid women are, ahem, self sufficient in the fertilization area. There you go ladies, in the hybrid zucchini world, men are totally useless.

We, in the past have always grown heirloom zucchinis, but when our neighbor gave us one of this Portofino squash last year, we had to try growing our own. The one he gave us was large, over a foot long, but the flower was still in tact at the end of it. We liked it because it had that crisp skin and sweet taste that the young, small zucks have without the pulpy seedyness that the older heirlooms get. And of course the hybrids wouldn’t get seedy, because they aren’t breed for saving seeds. They are breed so that you’ll buy seeds again the next year (tricky little business move, eh?).

So, what are we going to do with all these useless men? Eat them of course (very black widow of us, isn’t it?). Hopefully in the days and weeks to come I’ll be able to share with you some squash blossom recipes. Oh, and since you’re dying to know, the later planted zucchinis are the ones that have the first zucchinis on them. So back to my on-going self-debate, its not worth it to plant seeds ahead of time.

(Oh thanks to Compostings for such a lovely write up about us, we’re blushing.)

I hope you don’t have scales

I’m going to start with a pretty picture, because what I’m about to show you is ugly. Remember how I wrote up a nice little cheerful post about the good bugs in the garden? Well, what’s below is one that I hope you never see in your garden. And that is scale.

I don’t normally get squeemish about a bug here or there, but when they are in mass, it completely gives me the heebee jeebeeies. I first noticed these little black round guys on my two Chinese lanterns last year, but never did much about them at the time. I read that you should scrap them off, but being that I had just given birth and also had a two year old to contend with, I wanted no part of scraping anything extra off of anything else. So those poor plants when untended to. This year, the scale killed the smallest chinese lantern and seriously did some major damage to the above varigated one. I loved that tall, seven foot beauty, but it and it’s nasty scale had to go. It was completely covered, so I ripped it out.

Unfortunately I waited too long and the dreaded scale moved over to my oak leaf hydrangeas too. Those I did scrape off, the whole while wearing a look of complete disgust on my face, so hopefully it can be saved.

The UC Davis site says: “Populations of some scales can increase dramatically within a few months, such as when honeydew-seeking ants or dusty conditions interfere with scale natural enemies.” As you can see from the photo above, those ants were all over it.

Has anyone else had to deal with scale? Did you remove it successfully?

bugs you want to see

Now that the weather is warming up and the flowers are blooming we are seeing a lot of activity in the insect world on our little patch of land. Most people who either don’t garden or are new to gardening think of all bugs as ‘pests’, but actually there are ‘beneficial’ insects and of course harmful insects. As the gardening season progresses and we find more harmful ones, I’ll share those with you, but let me share with you the ones you *want* too see, okay?

I’ve already shared this picture with you. But honeybees are one of the most important, if not most important insect you want in your garden. They do all the hard work in going around to each and every flower collecting pollen and mixing it between male and female flowers. These little bees are the ones that transform your flowers into fruit and vegetables. Without them, and we are having to think about those terrible thoughts these days, we’d be running around with paintbrushes pollenating things ourselves. At this time of year you’ll find many resting in flowers and flying comically around with loads of yellow pollen on their legs as Krista mentioned.

Most people have heard about how ladybugs are beneficial. But did you know that they are beneficial in the larval stage too? They look like little tiny alligators, with six legs and are about a quarter of an inch long. Both the larvae and the mature ladybugs eat aphids, mealybugs and the eggs of many insects. I’ve been finding the ladybugs most commonly on my roses which always have aphids on them.

This bug is one that it’s talked about as much. It’s a soldier beetle. They are about 3/4″ long with black bodies and orange heads. They, like ladybugs each soft bodied insects and their larvae eat smaller insects during their time living in the soil. They also act as pollenators. I commonly find them on our mint plants which also have aphids on them.

So how do you attract these guys to your garden in the first place? Well, you can mail order ladybugs. But we’ve found that simply growing flowers and letting a few vegetables go to flower is the best way to attract them. The more of a mix of food you can provide, the more varietes of insects you’ll attract and the more likely they will be to stay in your garden too.