Corn Pollen

Bob Bauer

August 26, 2016 (Last Updated: March 06, 2023) | Reading Time: 1 minutes

August 24, 2016

I was amazed to learn that corn pollen ( pun intended ) that lands on a corn silk germinates and grows a pollen tunnel down to the kernel that the silk is attached to. That's a long way. It needs to get nutrients to grow so it must use sunlight and products from the silk. It sounds like a seed that builds it's own delivery source..

The pollen blowing off of our cedar trees in the winter is sometimes so thick that I think we have a fire. It seemed like such a waste to blow across the field until I learned that lady bugs eat pollen in their life cycle before they move on to aphids, and why I'd see them in the fields before the grass was pollinating..

August 25, 2016

So is it my imagination or is the Malabar Spinach starting to taste a little less sweet? Is it beginning to realize that it's leaves keep disappearing and that to make it to maturity and reproduce it needs to produce bitter or toxic flavonoids? It gets bitter for self preservation, like some old people we know. The honeydew melon, on the other hand, seem to melt in my mouth..

Maybe my mouth has gotten more acidic with age, like other old people we know..

August 26, 2016

I've got another night time mulch flipper in the garden. He likes to poop under the plum tree. I didn't plant the tree, it's a volunteer. There's plum pits in the poop..

He might have planted the tree. I got three plums off of it this year so maybe I should just let him fertilize it and I'll pick the plums..

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