June 18, 2020

More sex in the hoop house!

Being covered and closed, pollinators do not frequent the hoop house, leaving it up to me to do the matchmaking.

Zucchini produces separate male and female flowers and is not self-pollinating, so pollen needs to be transferred from the male flower to the female flower in order for it to fruit. I do this simply by brushing my finger across the anthers of the male flowers to gather the pollen (a small paint brush works just as well). I then wipe my pollen laden fingertip across the female flower’s stigma and then let nature take over. The pollen travels down the pollen tube to the ovary and reproduction begins. In a few days, a Zucchini is ready for harvest!

Male flower

Female flower

Pollen

June 8, 2020

Up against the south side of the stable, a few sulfur cinquefoil plants grow up out of the grass and bloom every year. It’s interesting, and in some ways revealing, how these are considered weeds by some, and wildflowers by others. I guess it all depends on how one chooses to look at things- or even if they look at things at all.

Aiming for perfection, we have been misled to believe that dandelions, clovers, wild violets, buttercups, and the like, are our enemies, but an unnatural sameness is our friend. We do not stop to think or appreciate that gone with the wildflowers so too are the bees, butterflies, and animals that need them to survive. It’s not just the life of a “weed” that is eliminated, but gone with it, an entire quilt of lives. We have been taught, knowingly and unknowingly, to surround ourselves with, and live, in mono-stands – that variety is somehow unwelcome, over riding the universe’s intentions.

It all leads me to think of the current events surrounding racism. I look out on my pastures and see all the “weeds” and can see that life was designed to complement differences. Where there are many different plants, life supports life, and life flourishes.  Where there is no diversity, life falls in on itself and disappears.

It seems that how we treat nature is also how we treat people, and we are not very good at either.