Sexual dysfunction in zucchini

Zucchini flowers are beautiful, but botanically imperfect. A perfect flower has both male and female function. Zucchini flowers are either male or female. One plant will produce both kinds of flowers, which we call monoecious (“one house”) in the business. Being retired and no longer having a whole college on which to pawn off excess veg, I have only three zucchini plants. It is not unusual for plants with single-sex flowers to offset male or female function to encourage cross pollination. Often, different plants will mature at different rates so that one will be producing pollen while another has mature stigma ready to receive it. Unfortunately, my zucchini are all maturing at exactly the same rate, and all have female flowers before male ones. The female flowers have a fruit (ovary) below the flower, as can be seen on the right in the photo. The male flowers (front and center) have no fruit and just produce pollen. 

Mature female flower, right; immature male flowers, center

I know from experience that unfertilized zucchini will not develop. I harvested these virgin fruits soon after the flower closed. I felt like there should be some special ceremony for preparing them, but in the end, I just cut them laterally and put them on the grill. One of the alleged virgins was larger than the others and seemed to have maturing seeds inside. How can that be? Perhaps it was “stepping out” with a nearby cantaloupe. Cucurbits are notorious for crosspollinating all over the place. It makes saving seed a challenge. I’m happy to report that I finally saw mature male zucchini flowers yesterday.

The last major weeding chore was the corn. Terry plants the corn and by house rules should be responsible for weeding, but he often finds other things to do until a crisis moment when I can’t stand it anymore. Here, for comparison, is a weeded row next to an unweeded row. You will also note that our germination rate this year was not high. Birds and/or ground squirrels got most of the seeds. We may have to hand pollinate.

Corn, before (left) and after (right) weeding. 

Terry was shamed into helping when I started working on it. When Hilda had the north garden under control, she helped too. That’s all done. We are now enjoying one millisecond of rest before the beans and peas will need to be picked and put up. Once the harvest starts, there’s little time for the weeds.

It has been extremely hot and humid lately. The chicks spend the middle of the day in the coop. Some sit in front of the screen door that has the fan behind it.

Standing in front of the fan

Some hang out around the water cooler.

Chicks around the waterer

Some sit on the low perch and pant. These two are male Murray’s Big Red Broilers.

Two male Big Red Broilers panting

We order all male meat chickens because they grow faster, but we seem to have at least one female. Notice the smaller comb.

A female Big Red Broiler next to a Black Australorpe

The young roosters are making pathetic attempts at crowing. I have also seen them making inappropriate and unwelcome advances on the pullets. This could be trouble before it’s butchering time.

The heat has negatively impacted egg production. The girls are using all their spare energy staying cool. I’m not sure what was going on with this egg, but it came out with little beads of eggshell in patches on the surface, making it look like a globe of the world.

Continents on an egg shell

The Baltimore and orchard orioles are still around. I remembered that they usually leave at the end of June. Maybe it’s the end of July. In any case, we are seeing fledglings at the jelly. Terry saw a male feeding a fledgling last week.

Baltimore oriole fledgline

There’s a new jelly-thief as well. Really? A robin? What is the world coming too?

A jelly-eating robin

I also saw a non-male hummingbird. It could be a female or a young male. Once the hummingbirds fledge, we see many more that don’t have ruby throats than do.

A female or juvenile hummingbird

The next few days are predicted to have record high temperatures. Any outdoor work will have to be done early in the day. I managed to finish the mowing this morning because it was too hot for dew overnight. Stay cool, everyone.