For people who want to grow more food with less work. 🌱 This is my weekly newsletter loved by 38,000+ subscribers—here's what one of them had to say: "These are not the regular run-of-the-mill garden-based emails. You actually touch on more unusual tidbits that encourage me to keep growing and learning."
seeing lots of squash flowers but no squash? here's why
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I saw this meme the other day and thought it was pretty accurate. 🤣 Monster-sized squash (in particular, zucchini) is usually the running joke all summer because they seem to double in size overnight before you realize they're there, hidden in the leaves. (Those sneaky things!) And the plants can be very prolific—just two plants can feed a family for months, especially if you harvest squash leaves and squash blossoms to eat, too. (Oh, you didn't know you could eat squash leaves? Then you need my book, The No-Waste Vegetable Cookbook.) I've had many overzealous zucchini harvests in my day, but I've also had quite the opposite: underperforming but otherwise healthy squash plants that don't seem to produce the quantity expected from them. Usually the flowers appear in abundance, but soon after they just shrivel up and fall off, leaving what looks like tiny rotting squash on the ends. Some people think this mystery die-off is caused by pests or diseases, but if your plant seems normal and even looks like it's thriving, the answer to this common problem lies in the birds and the bees—or lack thereof. Squash plants rely on pollinators to spread their pollen around so they can produce. But it's actually a lot trickier than you think: these pollinators have to be around at just the right time, carry pollen to just the right flowers, and do so quickly while the pollen is viable. When you think about it, it's amazing how squash flowers are pollinated at all when there are thousands of other flowers in your neighborhood that bees can visit in a day. And if those bees happen to skip your garden? Well, then you end up with very few to no squash on your plants. Not to worry, though: You can help your squash along (and even increase your yields) by doing what the bees do yourself. Here's everything you need to know about hand-pollinating your squash using 2 simple methods. Seasonal tipsIs it summer or winter?Last week we doubled up on camping trips, spending the first few days celebrating a friend's birthday and riding railbikes on the Mount Hood Railroad, a century-old shortline freight railroad that's now a scenic pedal-powered tour along Hood River. We had beautiful weather that made us even more excited for the second leg of our camping trip: skiing on Mount Hood, the only resort in North America that offers lift-served skiing in summer on the Palmer Glacier. Typically the glacier stays open through August or September, but this year (because of low snowfall) it was closing in mid-July. A friend and I decided to try summer skiing for the novelty of making turns on a glacier, and because we felt our ski season had been cut short by the bad winter. What we didn't expect was Winter Part II on the weekend we went up there. Mount Hood closed for two days due to snow (in late June!) and reopened on a particularly blustery and gloomy day. Thank goodness I decided to pack a shell and a fleece—just in case—because I'd assumed I would snowboard in a sweatshirt! It felt like winter all over again as we rode the lift up the glacier, but within the hour, the skies cleared up and we had wonderful (if not a tad chilly) weather. I know it seems absolutely crazy to ski down a mountain that looks like this, but it was a lot more fun than I expected! So now I can check that off my bucket list. ✅ Now that we're back home, we're in summer mode again:
P.S. Multiply your squash harvest (from the same plant!) using these easy hand-pollination methods. P.P.S. Summers are for road tripping, grilling, and enjoying food, friends and family outside! Let one of my books inspire your next meal: |
Garden Betty
For people who want to grow more food with less work. 🌱 This is my weekly newsletter loved by 38,000+ subscribers—here's what one of them had to say: "These are not the regular run-of-the-mill garden-based emails. You actually touch on more unusual tidbits that encourage me to keep growing and learning."