Do we really need to pollinate our tomatoes?

Often I get antsy and start searching the internet to find garden information. I stumbled upon an article from the New York Times headlined “Gadgets to Help Tend a Garden.”

The first gadget described in the article was the VegiBee. Apparently, the inventor had a disappointing crop of tomatoes one year and he came up with the Vegibee to help increase his yield. The inventor felt that his tomatoes were a failure because they were not being adequately pollinated and that the bees were not doing their job.

Whoa!! I had never heard that before! Now here my garden in Guerneville, CA on the Russian River, I have been growing tomatoes for years and I can swear on a stack of bibles that I have never ever seen a bee on my tomato blossoms looking for pollen. And I found another gardening forum comment that mentioned that there are not many other insects either that are attracted to tomatoes flowers. I never considered the possibility that the tomatoes I have always harvested in past years were created by some type of pollination process or that I needed to insure that it was taking place properly as a factor in my yields.

The fact is that I have mostly had very high tomato yields and I never did anything to get them. The only times I have small yields is due to weather, temperatures, watering & fertilizer issues, etc. I have never seen a need for me to blame the bees since I never saw any.

Further internet research led me to discover that tomatoes are self pollinating (Ooops! This is the wrong term. See discussion below). I did not know that. They have all of the parts to complete the act to produce tomatoes for you, therefore bees or other pollinating insects are not really necessary. All it takes, when the blooms are ready, is a slight breeze and gravity. Some recommend that every time you pass by your tomatoes, you should give your plants a slight wobble or shake and this will help to dislodge pollen to get the process going.

One post I found stated that it is wrong to say that tomatoes are self-pollinating (see Old Drone blog). The post, entitled, “A simple explanation of tomato pollination, please?” states: “The tomato must have help. It requires MOTION to release the pollen. Wind can accomplish this to some extent. Pollen grains are shaken loose and may land on the sticky stigma, thus accomplishing fertilization of some of the seeds. Note that this is not self pollination, as the tomato could not do this of itself.”

Also, according to Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pollenizer), “a plant can only be a pollinator when it is self-fertile and it physically pollinates itself without the aid of an external pollinator, as in the case of apomictic species like some rowans and hawthorns.” Therefore, tomatoes can never truly be self-pollinating because they need an external pollinator such as bees or wind or human intervention.

The inventor of the VegiBee also mentioned in the Times article  that his device improves upon the use of battery operated toothbrushes that some people apparently use to release tomato pollen. What? Can you imagine people in their gardens with an electric toothbrush trying to pollinate their little yellow flowers? Some posters in internet forums (see my Google search link) mention that others just use a regular toothbrush. Other posts suggest using a light paintbrush or a pencil. The image that is created in my mind of someone doing this is beyond ridiculous in my opinion. Tomato blossoms are generally very small in the first place and they look awfully delicate to me. I would personally find it very hard to do anything that might damage them in any way. There is no way I would be nudging them with a pencil or any kind of toothbrush.

Once my tomatoes get going in my garden with lots of sun and warm temperatures, the flowers show up like countless yellow stars in a sea of green. This is is especially true of the cherry varieties I have grown over the years.  So, why should I be standing in my garden over these plants with an electric toothbrush trying to pollinate every one of those little blooms in order to increase my yield? I will answer my own question: “Ain’t gonna happen around here! No way and no how!” I feel it is not necessary to use such a tool, even without bees and I find it hard to believe that people have the time to do this when there are so many other fun and important things that need to be done in the garden.

If you want or feel you need a VegiBee or a plain old electric toothbrush, then go for it. I will let the warm breezes do the work for me or I might gently shake my plants to release the pollen that is necessary to create delicious tomatoes. I will then smile and move on to other satisfying garden chores.

Compost Bins

Well, here are my compost bins! Not pretty to look at, I agree, at but they are extremely utilitarian and functional. Note the holes drilled in the side! Note the 1/4" hardware cloth wrapped around the bins to keep out critters and to let some air in!

These two bins are the ones I use to compost all leftover, unused and uneaten food, including meat and bones, dairy, grease, cakes and cake icing, moldy bread, all cooking and baking disasters, etc., etc., etc. You get the idea! Everything, and I mean everything, goes in. In a previous post, I even admitted that I put some water into an empty jar of salsa or an empty container of salad dressing or even mustard, swish the water around with the lid on, of course, and this solution is also used in the compost. Remember that I am one of those people who believes that if a human being could or can eat it, then it can be composted. I cannot imagine ever going back to tossing out moldy bread into the garbage.

I layer my kitchen waste with shredded newspaper, garden soil, brown snow (aka redwood tree needles), and, sometimes, steer manure. This is a compost that never really heats up and I never turn it. I have taken the top off and found tons of fly maggots working on the contents and with some minor digging into the pile, I have discovered tons of fat worms doing their bit. I guess I have created essentially worm bins here. The extremely raw, if you will, compost goes into the bin with all of the holes in it to let in extra air to reduce odors. Then, when I think it has broken down after many weeks, I use a small garden fork and transfer the contents of that bin into the bin with the smaller number of holes. I still do not turn it, the worms keep working on it, but the maggots have usually disappeared or are no longe alive. The second bin holds onto these contents until the first bin is ready to be emptied out again. Now, I use to take the contents of the second bin and toss them onto an open air compost pile I had lying on the ground. But since I have discovered tree roots growing up into these piles, I have decided to pile the second bin's contents directly into the garden for little bit more decomposition. Then I will spread it around. It looks great, but I have found that egg shells are still visible, bones that have been stripped of their meat and fat are still around, and to my ongoing shock, avocado skins, of all things, never seem to decompose! Go figure! Used paper towels and my shredded newspaper strips, which the worms seem to love, by the way, dissolve completely. But those pesky skins of the avocados seem to have the half-life of uranium. Maybe the defense department might be interested in this information I have discovered!!!

Hugelkultur

Even being laid up with a broken leg and a torn tendon in my ankle, situated here on my sofa with my leg up and my laptop on my stomach trying to type, I am constantly thinking about my garden and almost in tears that I cannot be out there doing gardening chores and harvesting vegetables.

But my laptop is my window on the world and I am taking advantage of that on a daily basis. I check out the Garden Rant blog daily and I have previously “liked” the Facebook pages of Sustainable Seed Co. and Mother Earth News.

I am currently in a mode where I am working to conserve water in my garden in an ongoing way. I am tired of paying high water bills. I am also very much in favor of leaving all of my garden waste (redwood fronds,  leaves, spent or dead plants) right in the garden instead of carting it all off to a compost pile. Too much work! Finally, I am tired of buying expensive fertilizers and really want to go back to natural fertilizers - with a main focus on manures.

So I have been looking at and putting into practice lasagna gardening techniques, before the injuries, and after examining a post from Sustainable Seed Co., I really like the concept of hugelkultur. Here are some informative links about this concept:

Hugelkultur: The Ultimate Raised Garden Beds, from the “Rich Soil” web site;

Hugelkultur: The Composting Raised Beds, from the “A Growing Culture” web site; and

Hugelkultur, Nature’s Raised Garden Beds, from the “A Way to Garden” web site.

The main idea of this type of garden bed and culture is the use of logs, limbs, and tree cuttings, rotten or new, at the base of the bed and then layering on, lasagna-style, other organic components until you have a large mound. Now, a lot of wood I get from around here in Guerneville comes from downed trees and limbs as the results of our winter rain storms. So, I am inclined to cut these up and use them in my wood burning Quadra-Fire stove. But I am sure I can locate enough to create hugelkultur beds. I just do not want those beds in huge mounds.

From: http://www.richsoil.com/hugelkultur/

 

From: http://rescape.co.nz/methods/hugelkultur/