Blossom time

From left to right top to bottom: green beans, snap pea, zucchini, Big Zac tomato, potato, cucumber (male), scapes, clematis, iris

It is blossom time in the garden. It makes for colorful morning visits and puts one in the mood of wonder while reflecting on the miracle of reproduction on this planet. I always feel sorry for those first zucchini fruit that whither on the vine for lack of a male flower at the time of her flowering. And I am forever fussing over the cucumbers in this early stage trying to play bee between the early male and female flowers.

The tomatoes do not rely on such timing, but they have problems of their own. The heirlooms do not like these wet mornings and humid days during blossom time, and I have already seen some blossom drop on the more finicky varieties.

When the potatoes blossom, then you know that potato production has begun underground. Not all varieties of potatoes produce blossoms and SOME varieties even produce a little fruit sometimes called a potato apple.

The garlic has a a fall back method of reproduction that you have to admire. The hard necked varieties send up scapes that turn into flower heads that can reproduce in hard times. I remove them in order to promote bulb growth below.

And then there are the flowers. Anything that goes straight from flower to seed seems a little hedonistic to me. As a vegetable gardener, I find flowers a bit frivolous. Where is the fruit, the root, the tuber, the bulb? Where is the usefulness to the rest of us? What is your legacy? I guess it is the beauty. Not a bad life's purpose.