Pollinating Strawberries, and Hand Pollination

Strawberries, while technically being self-pollinating, do benefit from some help. Many gardeners find that hand pollination of their strawberry plants produces a better yield.

There are several ways you can hand pollinate:

• use a cotton swab, and gently wipe each flower (using the same swab for all)
• use a soft clean paint brush and carefully brush the blossoms
• gently shake the plant (this may not work for plants with flowers that don't have both male and female parts)

Hand pollination is commonly used in greenhouses in lieu of bees, and it's a useful tool to know about.

My strawberry plants are thriving, but as I write this, they're not producing the quantity of fruit that I would like. I have tried all sorts of things including watering more and trimming off the runners, but it hasn't really made a difference. The one thing I haven't tried yet is hand pollinating. Now I'm going to!

Pollinating Blueberries

Last year I bought two small blueberry bushes, which both had flowers at the time of purchase. I brought them home and planted them on either side of our considerably large yard, thinking I'd end up with better spacing that way. The flowers, which had already been pollinated, turned into berries, and I thought the plants were doing well.

This year, one of the plants has died, and the other, while still very healthy, has not produced flowers OR fruit. What I'm learning now is that blueberry bushes are not self-pollinating, and need to be planted close to each other so that they can cross pollinate. While blueberries have both male and female parts, they are self-sterile and cannot be pollinated from their own pollen.

Bees are important for blueberry pollination, and they prefer warm sunny weather. Next spring I plant to purchase more plants and put them within close proximity of each other, in a sunny, bee-friendly location. Hopefully this will produce better results!

Pollination Terminology

Pollination is a fairly involved topic that I am just beginning to learn. Here is some basic terminology:

Male flowers: produce pollen and have only male parts (stamen, anther, and filament).

Female flowers: produce fruit and have only female parts (pistil, stigma, style, ovary, ovule).

Imperfect flower: a flower that has either all male parts or all female parts, but not both.

Perfect flower: a flower that has both male and female parts.

Self pollination: refers to the transfer of pollen from the male flower parts to the female parts of the same flower.

Wind pollination: pollen that is transferred to other flowers via air currents over a long distances.

Cross pollination: pollen that is transferred, mainly by insects, between flowers.

Self sterile: a plant that cannot be pollinated by its own pollen.

Self fertile: a plant that can be pollinated by its own pollen.

Ripening Tomatoes

Tomatoes taste best when they're ripened on the vine, but sometimes there isn't time before the first frost in the fall. This happened to me last year - we had such a short growing season that most of my cherry tomatoes were still dark green when the temperatures started to drop.

I googled the topic and discovered that you can ripen green tomatoes by bringing them indoors and placing them in the dark, somewhere cool. I thought I'd try, and took a large plastic container, lined it with paper towels, and spread out the tomatoes. I then covered them to keep the light out and waited, checking on them every couple of days.

Voila! Success. I discovered something interesting, too... if I took out ALL the ripened tomatoes, it took longer for new ones to ripen than it did if I left a few ripe ones in the tub. It turns out that ripe tomatoes produce Ethylene, which accelerates the ripening process for the others. Supposedly ripe bananas have the same effect on green tomatoes, although I haven't tried that one.

Here are some other tricks to speed up the tomato ripening process (these ones I haven't tried yet):

• shock the plant by yanking on the root
• cut back on watering
• pull the entire plant and hang it upside down

This year we're having a much warmer summer so I've been letting my tomatoes ripen on the vine, but it's nice to have some tricks up my sleeve for the future :)

Growing New Plants From Old, Without Buying New Stock

My Father-In-Law bought marigold seeds once, years ago. He plants them every year in our garden but he uses seeds from his own previously grown flowers. He showed me today how he gets the seeds from the flowers - it was far more simple than I had thought.

Marigold Seeds:

• take an old, drying marigold blossom, and remove the outside petals.
• pull the seeds out from inside the base of the flower.
• Once you remove the seeds, leave them out to dry before putting them away for use next season.

My Father-In-Law usually plants his in June (we're in Zone 8). He even showed us an ice cream bucket full of seeds he has stashed from last year.

He has also grown tomato plants from seeds taken from a store bought tomato, by simply removing them from the fruit and inserting them in the soil, without drying them or doing any other prep first. I haven't tried that yet, but I plan to!

Potatoes are one of the easiest foods to grow from your grocery cart - I've done this many times myself. You simply select a few potatoes with eyes sprouting, cut them in pieces ensuring that each piece has at least one eye, and bury them in the soil. They can take over your garden though, so watch out ;) They also can come back year after year, if any potatoes are not harvested and left in the soil.

One day I was turning the soil in my compost pile and I found an avocado pit that I had composted which had sprouted a new plant. I transferred it to my garden and watched it grow, only to have it die over the winter. I wonder now if I had brought it indoors, would it have survived?

What about you - what's your experience with growing new food and flowers from old?

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Planting Zones Explained

Planting Zones are weather regions determined by the lowest recorded temperatures for that area. They are used in gardening to rate plant and climate compatibility.

A numbered scale is used: the lower the number, the colder the region and the hardier the plant required. Knowing which zone you are in enables you to select plants that will thrive in your garden, rather than struggle in an incompatible climate.

Here is a link to a website that talks about planting zones. If you scroll down the page, there is a handy chart that summarizes the zones by temperature:
http://www.lawn-and-gardening-tips.com/planting-zones.html

Here are more helpful links as well:

http://atlas.nrcan.gc.ca/site/english/maps/environment/forest/forestcanada/planthardi
http://www.veseys.com/ca/en/learn/reference/hardinesszones

Annuals, Biennials, and Perennials Explained

Annuals are plants that live for only one season, and produce the next generation from seeds. Annuals germinate, flower and die all within one year.

Biennials have a limited life span as well, although they last longer than Annuals. The complete life cycle of a Biennial is two years. Flowering may occur only in the second year, as many Biennials require a cold weather dormant period (called vernalization) before they bloom. At the end of their life cycle in the second year, they produce seeds to start the next generation.

Perennials live for longer than two years. They grow and bloom in spring and summer. and then in the fall and winter die back. They begin growing again in the spring from their root stock.