The Birds and the Bees...

Well. the theme of this post could cause many to question what the point is. The point is that agriculture, for the most part, is about reproducing. Most crops produce something that is valuable to someone. More times than not, this is a result of a plant producing an offspring. Here at Farmville, we are in harmony with that concept and it's exciting when the plants have cooperated. The various pictures show the "children" that will become the fruit of all of the labor here at Farmville. Most people never get to see what this looks like.

The first and fourth pictures are small melons. The first is a watermelon and the fourth is an Ambrosia melon. Melons, as well as the squash and cucumbers rely on honeybees to pollinate them. As the bees forage for nectar from the blossoms, pollen grains stick to their legs. Because they visit each blossom, male and female, eventually the pollen finds its way to the right place and the fruit will form. Even seedless watermelons need to be pollinated. They are a special type of hybrid called a triploid, which means something to those who speak genetics talk. I don't, so I'll give you the farmer version. Triploids are self-sterile and can't reproduce. There are no male flowers on their vines. Pollen from the neighboring non-seedless vines provide the needed pollen for fruit to set, but because they are self-sterile, the fruit have no seeds. I know that wasn't much of an explanation and I probably should have just said seedless watermelons are a direct result of magic. That's the depth of my understanding on what goes on in their family planning world.

Those are Yellow Finnish potatoes in the second picture. These were the result of two shovel scoops. I was pleasantly surprised to find this many and they were a very nice size. They were growing fine until about a month ago and the vines looked like they had some kind of disease. I'm a terrible "potato father" and I neglected to have a potato doctor look at them to see what might be wrong. I figured I would just wait until the vines completely died back and see how many potatoes came from them. So far, it looks very promising. I even sliced one up and fried it for dinner. The only seasoning was salt, pepper, onion and garlic. The onion and garlic were from Farmville also. The garlic was a young bulb I pulled the other day and had not formed complete cloves yet. They are pretty good this way, you just slice and dice them like an onion. Dinner was rounded out by yellow squash from Farmville and a tomato from the store. Because this year has been so cold, the Farmville tomatoes are still a good two to three weeks away from being ripe. I drifted a bit off topic there, so back to reproduction. Potatoes are one of two ways the plant reproduces. Each potato has a few "eyes", which I'm sure everyone has had sprout on them when they don't use them up right away. If you cut the potatoes into pieces with at least one "eye" on each piece, the sprout will become a plant. That's dependent on putting that piece in the ground though. That's how these potatoes were planted. I bought seed potatoes at the nursery and cut them up and planted. The above ground part of a potato plant will also form flowers that produce seeds. These seeds can be planted as well. I have never grown potatoes from "true seed" as they call it. Some day, I'll have to give it try just say I did it.

The third picture is what an ear of corn looks like in the beginning. Nothing more than a small leaf cluster. As the main stalk grows, the very top will have tassels with pollen. The pollen needs to find its way to these ears when the silks are growing from the tips of the ears. Each silk strand goes to a kernel on the ear of corn. If the pollen does not make it there, the kernel will never form. When you have an ear of corn with "blanks" instead of fully formed kernels, its due to poor pollination. Corn does not rely on the bees to move the pollen from the tassels to the ears. It relies on gravity and wind. The wind shakes the pollen loose and gravity lets it fall down to where its needed. That's the reason you shouldn't plant corn in long narrow strips. Most of the pollen will be blown off target and the ears will have a ton of "blanks". At Farmville, each of the plantings were pretty much in the shape of a square, so the ears should be perfectly formed.

Hopefully everyone learned something about how these plants try and do what everything else tries to do, make more of their kind. Guess it's a good thing Farmville hasn't moved into animal agriculture yet. I'll need some time to figure out how to tactfully describe some of those reproductive processes. I might have to apply for a "PG-13" rating when we get to that fork in the road, especially if pictures are involved. We'll worry about that later.