Pollination of vegetable plants... do I need more than one? (2024)

FAQs

Pollination of vegetable plants... do I need more than one? ›

For crops that you're growing for fruits or seed pods, growing more than one is helpful and even necessary for a few. Tomatoes and peppers, for example, have "perfect" flowers that include both male and female parts on the same flower. Usually a little bit of wind is enough for those to pollinate themselves.

Somewhere between 75% and 95% [1] of all flowering plants on the earth need help with pollination – they need pollinators.

Pollination information. A wide variety of vegetable crops require insect pollination. Some of these crops require insect pollination to produce a crop, such as pumpkin, squash, zucchini, cucumber and swedes. Other vegetable crops which require insect pollination are 'seed-only' crops.

Vegetable crops that produce a fruit require pollination in order to develop fruit. Pollination occurs when pollen from a flower's male sexual organ (stamen) comes into contact with a flower's female sexual organ (stigma). Self-pollinators (such as tomatoes and peas) have both male and female parts on the same flower.

Planting cucumbers (or other cucurbits) in groups has nothing to do with pollination. You can easily grow a cucumber (or a melon, squash or watermelon) all on its own and still get an excellent harvest, because cucumbers self-pollinate readily.

For crops that you're growing for fruits or seed pods, growing more than one is helpful and even necessary for a few. Tomatoes and peppers, for example, have "perfect" flowers that include both male and female parts on the same flower. Usually a little bit of wind is enough for those to pollinate themselves.

There are two types of self-pollination: in autogamy, pollen is transferred to the stigma of the same flower; in geitonogamy, pollen is transferred from the anther of one flower to the stigma of another flower on the same flowering plant, or from microsporangium to ovule within a single (monoecious) gymnosperm.

Butterfly milkweed (Asclepias tuberosa), blazing star (Liatris), culver's root (Veronicastrum), purple prairie clover (Dalea purpurea), black-eyed Susan, and coneflowers (Echinacea), are long-blooming natives that will attract a variety of beneficial insects, particularly bees.

Tomato plants, like all fruiting plants, need pollination to grow. If bees or other pollinators are around, you can almost guarantee your flowers will set fruit. However, most are self-pollinating, so you don't actually need our friendly buzzing buddies to grow fruit.

Do potatoes need to be pollinated? ›

Potatoes have perfect flowers and propagate clonally via tubers. While potatoes do not require pollinators to reproduce, their flowers provide nutrients, drawing pollinators into fields3. When properly protected and supported, pollinators enhance farming systems.

If your plant is self-pollinating, all you need to do is brush inside each flower, making sure the pollen gets down into the pistil (middle part) of the flower. If your plant isn't a self-pollinater, brush up some of the pollen from the male flower and transfer it to the pistil on a female flower.

What does zucchini need in order to produce lots of fruit? Sunshine, heat and regular pollination. Zucchini is not self-pollinating. It has male and female flowers that require the assistance of bees and bumblebees to fly from male flowers, collect pollen, then disperse the pollen to the pistils of female flowers.

PARTHENOCARPIC CUCUMBERS

Unlike the gynoecious and monoecious varieties, which require pollination to produce fruit, parthenocarpic varieties produce fruit without the need for pollination. Parthenocarpic varieties are seedless, or nearly so (Figure 3), and the fruit develops in the absence of fertilized seed.

Cucumber production in greenhouses uses bumble bees and hand pollination to achieve marketable yields, but the use of stingless bees has also been proven effective for this production type (dos Santos, 2008).

Three-fourths of the world's flowering plants and about 35 percent of the world's food crops depend on animal pollinators to reproduce. That's one out of every three bites of food you eat.

Several vegetables require pollinators in order to produce fruit. Squashes, cucumbers, pumpkins, eggplant, okra, watermelons, and muskmelons must be pollinated by insects transferring pollen. Incomplete pollination of vegetables may result in misshaped or undersized fruits.

Cross pollination is when one plant pollinates a plant of another variety. The two plants' genetic material combines and the resulting seeds from that pollination will have characteristics of both varieties and is a new variety.

Plant at least two compatible-pollen varieties within 100 feet of one another. Pollination will still occur if trees are planted closer together, and may even occur between trees planted farther apart than this, but, for ideal pollination, up to 100 foot distance between trees is good to aim for.