Pollination is such an important but often overlooked part of fruit and vegetable production. A frequent call that I get is from someone asking why their fruit or vegetable crop hasn’t been produced. The inquirer will probably have healthy plants that have all the water and nutrients they could want. Light and soil requirements are also sufficient. The homeowner even saw an ample number of blooms earlier in the season.

In this scenario, their plants likely never got pollinated. When pressed about how many bees, butterflies, or wasps they’ve seen in the garden, their answer is none. It’s “none” most likely because they haven’t been looking for them, but without something to pollinate your cantaloupes, peaches, beans, or more, you will have nothing to harvest.

Pollination is such a key part of fruit production, and it is often misunderstood. Pollination is the transfer of pollen from a male anther in a flower to the female stigma of another flower in the same species to then grow a viable seed.

If pollination does not occur on my peach tree, then my peach tree sees no reason to develop the fruit around a non-fertile seed. Honestly, I’ve never cared if there was a viable seed within my peach, but if there wasn’t a viable seed from successful pollination, then you can bet the peach tree won’t spend its time and resources developing it. It will just try again next year.

Before we move on, let’s take that point one step further. Will the pollen from one peach tree, affect the fruit of another? No. A fertile seed in the middle of a fruit will be the combination of genetics from two different flowers. The genetic combination will affect the growth and production ability of the subsequent generation, meaning once planted then it would show its unique characteristics in that next fruit.

For home gardeners, if a straight-neck squash flower is pollinated by a Burpless cucumber, the squash plant will still grow a straight-neck squash. The genetic combination is held in the seed and will exhibit itself when it is planted and bears its own fruit.

With National Pollinator Week upon us (June 20-26), it is important to recognize the variety of pollinators that exist in addition to Honeybees. In Texas alone, the designation “pollinators” properly includes bats, bees, hummingbirds, butterflies, moths, wasps, flies, and beetles. There are approximately 3,600 bee species alone, which are native to the United States. Bumble bees, blue orchard bees, leafcutter bees, long-horned bees, mason bees, and the sweat bee are just a few types of the many in our area.

Cary Sims is the County Extension Agent for agriculture and natural resources for Angelina County. His email address is cw-sims@tamu.edu.

Educational programs of the Texas A&M AgriLife Extension Service are open to all people without regard to race, color, sex, disability, religion, age, national origin, genetic information or veteran status. The Texas A&M University System, U.S. Department of Agriculture, and the County Commissioners Courts of Texas Cooperating.

Last month at an Angelina County Extension seminar, our local vet, Dr. Bradley Clary, spoke about the common thieves of cattle growth, flies and internal parasites. It was an excellent talk about the losses each could incur on the herd and the steps necessary to put them at bay.

Looking ahead at the upcoming hay and grazing season, there is growing concern among the cattlemen with whom I have been visiting. While regions to the west of us are in a drought and facing harsh times, we are also short on rain and anticipating a difficult summer. Fertilizer prices are taking their predicted upward rise and causing an increase in the cost of hay.

While we cannot control the weather or input costs, we can control loss of cattle as well as loss of a calf crop from disease. A good vaccination program is a must during normal years and is of the utmost importance when herds and bottom lines are stressed.

This Tuesday, June 21, the Angelina County Extension office will host a program at 6:30 p.m. called “Cattle Herd Management”. The featured speaker is Dr. Bradley Clary, a local veterinarian. He’ll be covering issues that he’s seen in his years of experience as a local vet, working for cattle producers in this region.

Following his talk, I will be discussing a new hog trap. For years, folks have fought against the non-native, invasive, destructive feral hogs. There is a new trap on the market that is called the Pig Brig. Look it up online and I bet you’ll be impressed with their results. It is made from heavy duty netting that, when set up correctly, will have hogs rooting under the net and into the circular trap to feed on the corn placed there. After they are done feeding, the round pen with the tapered net in the middle does an incredibly effective job of keeping them in.

It does take a little pre-baiting for this net-trap, but almost any other good trap requires the same attention. The real key is that more and more hogs can continue to enter the trap and then are not able to get out. My best so far is 15 hogs in one set.

There is no fee for the program. Topics such as those above on basic herd health, fertility, trapping feral hogs, and overall profitability will be the focus of the program. We’ll have a demonstration trap set up for you to inspect.

Cary Sims is the County Extension Agent for agriculture and natural resources for Angelina County. His email address is cw-sims@carysimms.

Educational programs of the Texas A&M AgriLife Extension Service are open to all people without regard to race, color, sex, disability, religion, age, national origin, genetic information, or veteran status.