Just when you think you're a failure and seed musings

 Went out to water, picked the tomato and a couple of puny peppers then checked the zucchini and lo and behold, a good size one that has a flower on it! Yay! 

Had to scramble and find whatever male flower I could, luckily there was one that had closed already but it had lots of pollen. These pictures are after the sexy part.

So yay! That one should be all right and then watering and moving leaves around I find this one that must have escaped my notice or I forgot I pollinated it.

Not that big yet but it's growing!

I don't remember pollinizing one in that position. Bush on the right and it's toward the front so who knows, just glad it's growing!

The tomato fit in the palm of my hand, small but still edible. Almost looked like it had two 'navels' if you will but I think one dot was a wound or insect damage of some sort. 

Fruit is fruit no matter how small, if they are ripe I will eat them all!

I also threw some bell pepper seeds on the ground before I watered so will see what happens with those. Gotta mark my calendar and see how long it takes for them to sprout. All nestled in between the wood pieces where water collects.

Maybe five or six seeds

Always good to put in more than you need and then cull them later if needed. 

Speaking of seeds, I realized years ago that corn has the highest fruit to seed ratio that can produce more from one cob than others. Imagine an ear of corn, there's dozens if not hundreds of potential seeds on the ear. All you need is one ear to produce a good size plot of corn. Wheat not so much, it's a grass also but the heads are much smaller so in terms of number of seeds per single 'fruit' corn has it beat. We're talking commercial/production not home garden. Because really..tomatoes and peppers you can get dozens of seeds as well from one fruit and have an entire plot of plants. 

"Corn is pollinated by wind and is typically planted in 30-inch (wide) rows A single seed (or kernel) of corn may produce a plant which yields more than 600 kernels of corn per ear. On one acre of land, anywhere from 22,000 to 35,000 individual plants may be grown."

So there you have it. so how many kernels are on a viable ear of corn? Anywhere from 500 to 800 on average for a good ear of corn. So let's take the average and do 600 kernels in the original citation and you have a really good size chunk of corn planting. So for yield capacity  a bell pepper is anywhere from 200 to 600 and take less space than corn does. Am I going to be planting corn any time soon? Nope, not gonna happen. Just a bit of seed trivia is all.

It really is amazing though that one fruit of anything has the potential for producing several hundred plants. Now when you think about how much we treasure getting fruit and nuts and all that, we are eating potential baby plants. That plant just wants to reproduce and continue the species but we humans have figured out how to cultivate and grow plants and hybridize to maximize production, color and size of what we get. Modern fruits that we are familiar with look nothing like their ancestors from hundreds of years ago. Historical botany is fascinating sometimes and thank you for going on this little side trip down the rows of planting.