In article
Ecnerwal writes:
In article ,
lid (Drew Lawson) wrote:
At least some of my cucumber vines have a tendency to produce fruit
that gets appropriately plump at the stem end, but never does so
at the blossom end. In some cases, the narrow blossom end curls
back toward the rest.
Poor (incomplete) pollination?
That was my main guess. But as a guess, I wanted confirmation.
If there are no seeds to be made, the plant does not waste energy on the
fruit around the missing seeds - often happens with apples - when you
have a severely lopsided one, the seeds on that side are not there,
typically, indicating it was not fully pollinated. I'd guess the same
thing might be happening with your cukes. You might want to try
hand-pollinating some to see if it makes a difference. Doing what you
can to support local pollinators (including the alternative ones) would
be a more long-term approach.
We have a solid bumble bee presence (currently on the Russian sage),
and the various "hover fly" wasps (which probably aren't much for
pollinating), but the honey bees are thin the last few years.
I *did* see some last year (and this year), as opposed to the year
before. So I am hoping that the local situation is improving.
As I said, the over-all harvest has been good. I was wondering if
this was some other common environment issue.
This year, I have more variety planted (most not yet blooming), so
time will tell if that helps.
--
|Drew Lawson | If you're not part of the solution |
| | you're part of the precipitate. |