The area we live in is famed not only for it's snooty people, but it is also well known for it's poor soil quality and heavy shade - and abundant, damaging - HUNGRY! - vermin, including, but not limited to: rabbits, squirrels, voles and hordes of chipmunks and more deer than you would believe that would care to venture this close to the center of a major metropolitan area.
Vegetable gardens in Lade, MO (St. Louis burb) are virtually unheard of for many social and economic reasons (most residents choose to buy their produce from the market, and / or hire a professional gardener! Combine the vermin and poor geological factors, you end up with a lot of Ladue, MO (and Frontenac, Town & Country, etc) well-groomed lawns with plantings that are especially and specifically selected to be unattractive to vermin that get a weekly visit from a hired, well paid, professional lawn care company. That doesn't leave much hope for the rare Ladue home gardener guerrilla vegetation vigilante, does it? Most plants absolutely hate the Ladue soil and heavy shade, but I do have a few that love this area. Oregano will grow vigorously, as will Curry Plant (a straw flower relative, and not actually 'curry') will grow happily if it is given a sunny, well-drained slope. With bare minimum lighting requirements, I can get most herbs to live happy and prosper less than 5 feet from our front door. The only way I can get a tomato to SLOWLY mature to a complete and finished stage is to completely surround the plant with both green mesh fencing AND thick layers of very fine black bird netting. In fact, I keep every plant that is not in a tall pot surrounded by both methods: The black bird netting and the green plastic fencing. (I am a living testament that a chipmunk will eat a tomato much more efficiently than a much larger squirrel! A squirrel will take the tomato, eat half of it, and leave the rest to rot beneath the tree that he just scampered up. Not Mr. Chipmunk! He will eat the whole damned tomato! While most people believe that a chipmunk is a 'ground squirrel', they are the most clever, adept climbers. You can stake up an unprotected tomato plant, thinking that if you get the developing tomatoes high enough off the ground, they will be safe from vermin. Rabbits. Maybe. But ALL the vermin that I previously listed till readily eat a huge tomato vine right off at the bottom, where the vine meets the ground, and leave the entire plant to die. (You don't know how many times I have prayed for owls and hawks, and proportionately to those prayers, I have heard and seen both owls and hawks in our area!) Both chipmunks and squirrels can easily climb up a staked-up tomato plant, and you won't have a single tomato - not even green ones - left on the vine. I have even heard chipmunks scurrying up our drain spouts, only to see them peeking over the lip of the gutter from our rooftop at me. Because of piss-poor natural lighting conditions and even worse soil conditions, I bought and assembled two 4' x 4' raised beds from Home Depot (foolishly thinking that the raised beds would not only solve the poor soil conditions, but that it would also deter the voles and the chipmunks. Nope. They said to each other, "Ok, look! daddy added on a second floor to our house!", and they very adeptly tunneled up and through the raised beds, completely bypassing the green plastic fencing and black bird netting. Back to the squash: I reserve one of the 4' x 4' raised beds for squash plants and patchouli (yes, the 1960's - 1970's fragrant oil!) plants. Due to heavy vermin attacks, I don't get many squash that survive to maturity, but I have had several large, mature butternut squash, a couple acorn squash, and a few huge zucchini to grow to a fully mature stage. I have also successfully crossed a zucchini and a butternut to get a "Bikini":  | |||
| A Butternut squash (left) a Zucchini (Middle) and my home-grown "Bikini = Zucchini x Butternut" on the far right. The Butternut and the "Bikini" were grown on the same vine. When cut open, the 'Bikini' is all Butternut inside!
When I went to the Missouri Botanical Garden this past Wednesday to do one of my weekly trips, I noticed a young lady that was gently pulling back the leaves of several squash plants in the Kemper Center Home Demonstration Gardens. It was not difficult to tell that she was actually looking for something. She was on a mission. I asked her, "Are you looking for mature fruit / squash?" (First and foremost, I was completely blown away by the fact that this young lady - less than 25 yrs old, and looking VERY cosmopolitan / hip would even know what a squash plant was, much less care about whether or not that it was producing viable fruit.) We both noticed that that particular plant did have a couple maturing spaghetti squash on it. She confided in me that she had planted some squash plants *from seed*, and that to this point, she was getting only male flowers - and no female flowers or maturing squash. She lived in an area with much better growing conditions (better soil, better light and no vermin) than we live in, and she was still having the same luck - none at all - that we were having with our zucchini plants. For the uninitiated, I was raised in the country my entire childhood, and until I moved to the 'big city' on my own. I don't remember a single summer growing up that we didn't have a garden, and I will spare you the even longer story that it was my duty to work in those gardens every year that I was physically capable of doing do. I planted I cultivated. I harvested. I also can't bring to the forefront of my memory a single season that we didn't have a bountiful crop of both HUGE, mature zucchini AND thousands of male zucchini blossoms (and male pumpkin blossoms!) that are great when dredged in a cornmeal (or flour) batter and deep fried. Sprinkle on a little salt and VOILA! Lunch or supper! Anywho, the moral of that chapter in this increasing book is that I know my way around a garden, and that I am no stranger to growing anything in a midwest garden. THIS YEAR: I bought three "Black Beauty" zucchini plants that were already several inches long (the plants - no fruit yet) when I planted them. I also planted the seeds from a couple of my previous year's crosses. I fertilize weekly - and I fertilize well. The lack of fertilizer is not a problem in any of the plants that I parent. As of this writing, on any and ALL of my squash plants - both the purchased plants and the ones that I planted from seed - have produced nothing but mature MALE flowers. It took me a couple weeks to realize that I actually do actually get an occasional female flower (with the swollen base (ovules) beneath the flower), but this flower, oddly enough, will never mature enough to open as it should, and after a couple days, the the entire structure will wither and die away. What the Hell is up with that? A couple days ago, I had my fill of non-maturing female flowers, and I decided to take action. (Remember the "Bikini"? I love garden freaks!) I took a pair of scissors out to the garden, and I cut open a non-maturing female flower. I took one of my African Grey parrot's molted feathers, and I transferred copious amounts of pollen from a male flower to the immature female stigma that I had exposed. I know that there is a reason why flowers open when they do: They are mature and ready to open. A flower whose parts are not developed for the next stage of reproduction will not open until those parts have properly matured. But....had grown impatient from losing so many female flowers that wouldn't mature and they wouldn't open under their own power, so I decided to take action.
Even thought the stigma had not reached a fully matured state, I was going to give the flower a helping hand. I hand pollinated an immature female flower. (Much to my astonishment, the next day, the few remaining parts of the flower that I hacked with scissors the day before actually opened the next day! Cut and hacked as much as it was, the remaining parts of the orange corolla opened as much as it possibly could, and in addition to my hand pollination, bees were visiting this flower, too.) Just this morning, I noticed that the swollen ovules had developed into a tiny zucchini. How big it will actually grow remains a mystery, but, one way or another, this little girl is going to grown into a full-fledged woman! he he he This is how she looked this morning: |
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| Note the small, unopened flower and dying ovules above this developing zucchini. ALL the other female flowers on every squash plant in my garden - this year - died before developing in the same manner. |
Stand back! I have scissors and I will use them if I am forced into action! :D
I will hack every one of these female flowers if that's what it takes to get a full-sized zucchini.
- Michael
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