I witnessed the pollinators doing their good work on my cucumber plants: Honey bees!
I looked up how far honey bees will fly to forage, and the general consensus seems to be upwards of four miles, with some going farther. That is a rather large circle around our area, so I don’t know if they are wild or a neighbor is keeping bees. We live in an area where either is possible.
My cucumber plants are starting to grow vines! I have a trellis set up in the raised bed and would like them to climb that rather than drape off the sides of the bed. I found it helps to gently hook the questing tendrils around the metal. I wrap the tendril around the post, then hook it back through the loop, like a knot, but not tightened.
I have learned something new. This in itself is not new; I enjoy learning new things and strive to do so often. What I learned about cucumbers surprised me, and made me realize how little I know about horticulture (this is also not new, the things I don’t know about are a vast expanse). I have learned that there are male and female flowers on a single cucumber plant. And, I learned how to tell them apart.
I have learned about this because I have three mounds of nice healthy cucumber plants, and no cucumbers. Nada. Zip. I thought a cucumber was developing, but then it withered away. It turns out that what I saw was the unfertilized stem of a female flower. The female flower has what looks like a tiny cucumber behind the bloom, the male flower does not. My plants have many, many blooms, but the usual pollinators are not visiting, maybe because they were all in the meadow with the wildflowers and these are closer to the house. Yes, we do have an exterminator come and treat the outside of the house, but not the yard or woods. I have seen bees in the meadow and in the front yard, but mostly just dragonflies and ground wasps around the cucumbers. So now I have a soft artist’s paint brush tucked in my egg apron so that I can pretend to be a bee and transfer pollen from flower to flower. Maybe we’ll see cucumbers before the vines die.
Singular. One cucumber harvest. But, super exciting for me because this is my first successful cucumber planting! I pulled this guy off because we had a large storm rolling in and I was worried about hail damage. We did have hail, so it was a good call.
There are more potential cucumbers on the vine. This one developed for three weeks, so there is a chance of more cucumbers before winter saunters into our neck of the woods!
Oh my oh my! There is an actual cucumber developing on my cucumber vine!
The cucumber vines are happy in their wire enclosure (recycled from the cage we cobbled together for the growing chicks), and are now climbing the wire. I put up the wire the keep the critters out, but I’m happy that the cucumber is up off the ground.
Critters and Craft 