Hand Pollinating

[Jackalope]

I've been doing some reading on hand pollinating, and I think I understand the part about shaking the tomato bush to do the pollination, however, with the squash (I think it's zuchinni), for the past few weeks they have been flowering, but they are all male flowers :? I haven't seen any female flowers (the ones that grow next to the vine and have a mini-squash at the base of the flower. Any idea on how to "induce" the female flowers to bud and bloom?

BTW, a guy died and I ended up with his oxygen generator - which puts out pure oxygen, if I'm not wrong. I had some tomatoes growing that a couple of the leaves were kinda pale, looked like they were going to turn yellow ...... I put the oxygen directly under the two plants and now all the leaves are a deep emerald green ;) The rest of the plants in the GB are looking better too!.

[organicusrex]

I assume you're doing this for seed stock. Zucchini like any plant has a survival trigger. Try pruning it back a little to see if the threat doesn't trigger more female flowers.
Using the male flowers like a paint brush is an easy way to pollinate squash of any kind.
I've never had a squash with this problem but pruning triggers better fruit production in most plants.

Plant roots love oxygen and plant leaves love carbon dioxide. This is an interesting outcome from your oxygen generator. Is it the type of generator that patients with lung diseases would use?

[Jackalope]

I assume you're doing this for seed stock. Zucchini like any plant has a survival trigger. Try pruning it back a little to see if the threat doesn't trigger more female flowers.
Using the male flowers like a paint brush is an easy way to pollinate squash of any kind.
I've never had a squash with this problem but pruning triggers better fruit production in most plants.

Plant roots love oxygen and plant leaves love carbon dioxide. This is an interesting outcome from your oxygen generator. Is it the type of generator that patients with lung diseases would use?

OK, thanks, I didn't know there was any sort of trigger, I've done that, and I found a male flower on a cuke or watermelon, we can't remember which, so I pollinated it.

Yes, the oxygen generator is the one that patients use at home ..... I figured that pure oxygen was just as good, if not better, than air, which is only part oxygen ;) We only run it about 6 hours a day, becuz once it breaks down, it's done, so I want to make it last as long as possible.

[organicusrex]

If you're handy with a set of tools and can troubleshoot problems you might be able to keep that oxygen concentrator going for a long time.
http://www.oxygenplusmedical.com/

They have parts for several types. My son is the one who told me that if there's something you can think of, it's out there on the internet someplace.

For the sake of seed saving and pollination there's a method of screen caging plants to isolate them from other pollinating insects. You merely capture some honey or mason bees and place them in the cage but never let them out. They will pollinate for you and the mason bees only need a block of wood with holes drilled in it for nesting. They produce no honey but can out pollinate honey bees hands down. :D
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mason_bee

They don't sting, they're not demanding and North America would suffer a serious setback if these little guys died out all of a sudden. Honey bees are an import from Europe so they aren't truly as important as some tend to believe. :cool:

Night pollinating moths do more work than European bees in America, not to mention butterflies, hummingbirds, flies, hornets and wasps. Even ants pollinate by accident and some crab spiders use flowers for camouflage pollinating as they move about.

Chemical pesticides and poor soil management over a couple generations are the biggest culprits in upsetting the natural scheme of things. Mega-farming offers nothing enriching that I can see. Their foods are deficient in nutrients and flavor, they deplete the soil, contaminate water ways and can easily be linked to various types of cancer.

Most environmental laws go after the individual instead of ADM, Monsanto and Cargill to name a few major perpetrators of chemical destruction. Those big 3 fund most of the agricultural colleges in the US and want their tentacles to reach out so they can engulf the rest of the world through globalism.

Sorry, but I found this soap box sitting here and when I stepped up on to it something came over me.

[Jackalope]

OK, thanks, I didn't know there was any sort of trigger, I've done that, and I found a male flower on a cuke or watermelon, we can't remember which, so I pollinated it.


Uhhhhhh that was a female flower ..... sorry for the FFE, sure wish you could edit a post here lol :D

[bunya boy]

Jackalope,
Hi, you can edit your own posts. If you look down the the right hand side bottom of your posts, you will see another button called "edit" with a pair of scissors and paper as an icon. It only appears on your own posts so no-one else can have a fiddle with it!

Cheers IanK

[Murray]

There is a time limit of 60 minutes on editing your own post. After 60 minutes the edit feature will not work. Moderators can edit any post at any time.

[wishes]

i've been having alot of problems with zuccini & pumpkin flowers coming at differant times to each other, in ground garden, for three years now, potash is what makes plants fruit & flower, not sure what you do for ap beds, hand pollinating is easy, its obivious which is m & f, & you can pick male flowers & store pollin, i keep thinking it's the enviroment, & bees are a rare item around here . thank god for the bumble bee. anyone out there in tasmania?? :)

[cando]

You are lucky to have bumble bees in Tassie. I attended a talk on bees at the Redland Organic Growers Inc on Tuesday night and the hydroponics people have tried to get bumble bees into the mainland for pollination but were knocked back by the government.

Apparently European Honey Bees cannot operate inside a greenhouse since they use UV light for navigation and our native honey bees cannot handle the high humidity inside a greenhouse. There is only one solitary native bee that can do the polination inside greenhouses. It has a pinkish/purple body but I did not get the name.

Francois

[Jackalope]

Well, I hand pollinated the one, and now it's disappeared :? It definitely looked like it had a fruit (small cuke/watermelon) but now i can't find it anywhere ........ the squash/cuke/watermelons have been a bust for me ..... no female flowers in sight, but the tomatoes are 4 feet tall and still flowering ....... no fruit yet, but lots of flowers, and from what I read, all you have to do for tomatoes is shake them twice a day and that's it (I hope that's it, because there's nothing that looks like a fruit under the flower like a squash or cuke is supposed to have).

I've just been given the word by the war dept that I won't be allowed to my aquaponics setup into the mobile home for the winter, so I'm wondering how to sneak a few 10 gallon tanks of guppies into the house to provide a few fresh veggies during the winter :p:p

I think I've come up with a pretty neat idea for a biofilter ....... I'll post it when I get the dough-ray-me to put it together, and then ask for input and advice as to whether you all think it's a good idea ;).

[Harold B]

Interesting idea to use bees because some growers claim it works best in high volume green house's large production area but not so successful in small operations, but I think that you may have opened a Pandora's box when you mentioned government regulations I know that some states refuse to allow produce to be marketed that has been fertilized with animal waste like manure and aquaponics by using fish waste is violating those regulations. Have you any ideas about what the government's willingness to allow it's subjects to do, will allow aquaponics to become an economically viable form of production for food or will it forever be forced to remaind a home made hobby for individuals