Allotments 4 All

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Saved my sanity this year, the only remnant of my former activities. No pubs no Folk clubs no morris dancing, no folk festivals and no weekends away in the motorhome. Spent a lot of time working on my sanctuary. Lock down turned to mock down, but never made any difference to my daily activities, trouble is all the beach lovers, demonstrators, and those who do not really think there is a pandemic have kept putting my cataract op back by keeping the bug going. Still at least the doc has stopped sending me to the stupid Well Man clinics and finding something else wrong with me. Never been so healthy.

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I’ve been very keen to try to produce seed from some courgette and squash varieties I’m growing, but have found it a much trickier operation than I realised.
I understand the basics of taping or bagging (which is better?) a male and female flower one day and then attempting hand pollination the next when the flower opens, but actually carrying it out hasn’t proved at all easy!

Some problems:

* Often there isn’t a female and male ready at the same time. After the wet weather we’ve been having it seems there’s another rush of male flowers and hardly any female
* I believe the flower opens for one day but I can’t always tell whether a female flower is about to open or has already opened and is now past its prime day. More observation needed!
* To mimic bee pollination I’ve read on another group that it’s a good idea to use several male flowers to pollinate one female
* With courgettes I need to sacrifice a plant to seed saving totally in order to let the pollinated courgette grow to large maturity for seed harvest. This is likely to stop the plant producing other courgettes for consumption young. Is this the case? Squash are OK because you can save the seed when preparing them for cooking and eating.

So all in all I’m feeling rather defeated at the moment. Has anyone been successful in this tricky operation? Any tips for carrying it out successfully would be gratefully received. It seems that time is running out for getting pollinated fruit with time enough to reach maturity.

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