Re: Zuccini

You should do what I found out on this (or another) newsgroup several years ago:

When you get both male flowers (regular stems) and female flowers (stems that look like little zucchini), take a small paintbrush, use it to get pollen from a male flower (inside it, at the stamen) , and brush it on a female flower (inside it, on whatever it's called). You'll get the idea. It will increase your squash yield by a bunch.

Dave&Dana Gaunky wrote:

This is my first season growing zuccinni, black beauty variety. It's now > about 8 inches tall and the foiliage is looking great, and earlier this > morning I noticed what appeared to be some flower buds starting low on the > main stem. My Q is is this normal, and will the little zucc's be blander > because of it? Thanks for the help.

You are right, but only up to a point. For pumpkins, squash, etc., it is true. But most home gardeners harvest their zucchini while they are small--at most a day after the flower opens. At this stage, it is immaterial whether the flower has been pollinated or not--the fruit is of a size perfect for picking. Only if you intend leaving the fruit to reach a more mature marrow size need you bother about the pollination. This is the beauty of zucchini--you don't need bees (or paintbrushes) to get your crop. Picked at this stage (on the day that the flower opens) the fruit is at its tastiest and most tender, and the plant will go on to produce tons more fruit if you keep picking them early. If the flower is not properly pollinated the individual fruit must be harvested while tiny, it will never grow into a mature marrow; left on the bush each fruit will wither and drop off within days of its flower opening.