Post #G21-040: A male problem - Hang your (slowly rotating plastic) head in shame. The issue I'm having a bit of a male fertility problem these ...

Post #G21-040: A male problem.

Hang your (slowly rotating plastic) head in shame.

The issue
I’m having a bit of a male fertility problem these days. I wake up in the morning, look down,
and see … nothing.

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Post #G21-040: A male problem.

It’s the heartbreak of B.D.

Blossom Dysfunction. I have no male squash blossoms in my garden.

This has been going on for some weeks now. Given that I have about a dozen summer
squash, this isn’t just the occasional random imbalance between male and female flowers.

I’ve found scant mention of this problem (no male squash blossoms) on the internet. A lack
of females is commonly discussed, as that typically happens when the plants just start
blooming. But prolonged absence of male flowers is unusual.

The sum total of internet wisdom on this issue is that it might be due to insects. Or birds.
Or mammals. In fact, the only thing the internet absolutely rules out is Jewish space lasers,
since it is well known that those only remove the calyx and leave the stamen scarred but
otherwise untouched.

And since I can’t be entirely sure who the culprit is, I’m just going to have to try a few
things and see what, if anything, works.

The symptoms.
Something is removing the entire male flower bud. I’m left with a cleanly-sheared stalk
where the male flower should be. The flowers aren’t falling off — they aren’t sitting on the
ground below. They haven’t been gnawed off, as if by insects. They are just gone, as if
something took them in one gulp.

I can see that the plants are still forming male flowers. I can see tiny to nearly-mature male
flowers on several plants. It’s just that all of them get eaten before they flower.

This happens overnight. I’ve been carefully studying my remaining male flowers, and those
flower heads are disappearing sometime between sunset and when I first get to the garden

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Post #G21-040: A male problem.

early in the morning.

This year, I’ve staked my summer squash and continuously prune off the lower leaves. So
the flowering head of the plant sits well off the ground, under a canopy of leaves, but
exposed from below.

The possible culprits
I think I can rule out insect damage. Insects just aren’t that neat, they don’t remove the bud
on one sitting. And, I’ve sprayed spinosad all up and down the stems (for squash vine
borer), which should kill any chewing insects forthwith.

What I’m seeing is perfect, untouched male flower buds disappearing cleanly and entirely,
overnight. Insects just don’t have the housekeeping skills to do that.

It might be some mammal. I have both chipmunks and squirrels. But I’ve never seen either
one in the raised beds with the squash. And in my experience, neither of those are very
neat eaters, either.

If the squirrels had gotten them, high up on the squash plants, they’d have snapped off
some leaves, broken the flower stems, spoiled some female flowers, and so on. Then left
half the uneaten male flowers, and dropped a load of squirrel poo, just to show they were
doing it mostly out of spite.

So there isn’t enough random, mindless, needless damage and mess in this case. I think
that rules out squirrels. And although the chipmunks are certain agile enough, it’s hard to
believe they could get in and out and otherwise leave no trace.

Birds are my best guess, and right now, my bet is on a juvenile cardinal that I saw exiting
my raised bed early this morning.

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Post #G21-040: A male problem.

No teeth, so they nip things off whole. Or slash a tear in them. Which fits the damage that
I’m seeing. They’d take an entire bud at once. And birds are early risers, explaining the
overnight disappearance. Based on what I saw this morning, they are foraging in my garden
before I’m typically up.

They are plenty agile enough to get at those blossoms. Last year, when I grew a bunch of
sunflowers, I observed something I would not have guessed was possible: Cardinals can
hover like hummingbirds (Post #G17). Briefly, at any rate. And by staking these up and
opening up the entire underside of the plant canopy, I’ve given them access to the entire
flowering head of the plant.

Finally, birds are known to eat flower buds, particularly when other sources of food are
scarce. Here’s one reference that says so (note the focus on cardinals), and here’s another
one. And I found one internet thread where, in fact, lack of male squash blossoms was due
to one cardinal who had developed a taste for them.

The treatment.
To cut to the chase, although I haven’t caught them in the act, I think I’m losing my male
squash blossoms to birds. Specifically to juvenile cardinals.

My first thought was to leave the plants alone and just keep the birds off. Bird netting
always seem to result in my having to free some birds that get stuck in the net. So I decided
to try the full range of “bird scaring” devices. Hence the sad and totally ineffective owl at
the top of the post. Along with the shiny “bird scare tape”, and, not shown, the cheesy
rubber snakes in the garden bed itself.

All of which my local cardinals cheerfully ignored.

So now I’m down to putting physical barriers around the individual flowers. Luckily, I only
need one male flower a day. So I don’t have to protect every male bud on these plants.

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Post #G21-040: A male problem.

                         My first device repurposes the wire cages from my failed “bee
                         proof” sticky traps (Post #G21-032). I just squeeze them into shape
                         and drop them over the developing male flower buds. They will
                         certainly ruin the male bud when it flowers, but the pollen will still
                         be inside, ready to be harvested and used.

My second device is just a fine cloth bag, fixed over the male flower bud. It’s a bit of tulle
(open-weave fine cloth), held around the male flower stem with a bit of velcro-like plant tie.
Plausibly, if I do that right, the flower will be able to open up with that arrangement.

I have that all set up in my garden. I’ll report back tomorrow on whether either approach
seems to solve my case of Blossom Dysfunction.

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