Growing Summer Squash is a lot Like Life

Growing summer squash is not hard in the scheme of gardening. It gets big fast, like kids, yet you don’t get mature fruit right away. First you get blossoms. Big, beautiful, bright yellow flowers. Some are male and some are female. The male ones have a stamen which is long and pointy, the female has a cup like center. It takes both of those blossoms to make a squash.

Actually it takes the pollen from the make to reach the female and that takes, bees, just the right breeze or a tiny paint brush and an interested human. The blossoms are sexy and inciting, especially to a cook who wants to stuff them with goat cheese, fry them and serve them on a puddle of roasted red pepper sauce.

True success in squash requires patience and discipline to leave the blossoms to grow a vegetable. Then the trick is to watch it closely so you pick it when it is not to small, but not too big. You never know if you get it right, but you enjoy it nonetheless.

So getting the balance of enjoying a few blossoms and leaving the other to grow fruit is the key. The trick is to take the Male blossoms to stuff and just brush their pollen on the female blossoms, because only the female actually can grow a vegetable. Just like life.