266 Cucumber Growing Basics

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TRANSCRIPT GB 266 Cucumber Growing Basics; How Bees Communicate

Farmer Fred

Garden Basics with Farmer Fred is brought to you by Smart Pots, the original lightweight, long lasting fabric plant container. It's made in the USA. Visit SmartPots.com slash Fred for more information and a special discount, that's SmartPots.com/Fred.

Welcome to the Garden Basics with Farmer Fred podcast. If you're just a beginning gardener or you want good gardening information, you've come to the right spot.

Farmer Fred  0:31

According to one recent national poll of backyard gardeners, cucumbers are the second favorite crop for growing. In a poll conducted by the National Gardening Association, 86% of gardeners cited growing tomatoes as their favorite, and cucumbers came in number 2.

We’ve talked about tomatoes extensively on this podcast. But, how do you grow and enjoy cucumbers? We’ve got the varieties, the growing techniques, the harvesting tips and advice on how to get rid of the bitterness of certain cucumbers. America’s favorite retired college horticulture professor, Debbie Flower, is an avowed fan of the cucumber, so who better to turn to for cucumber growing basics.

Plus, have you ever wondered how bees communicate to the other bees that they’ve found a site filled with pollen-rich plants? They do the waggle dance! We talk to a bee expert who has studied these dance moves.

It’s all in today’s episode 266, Cucumber Growing Basics. We’re podcasting from Barking Dog Studios here in the beautiful Abutilon Jungle in Suburban Purgatory. It’s the Garden Basics with Farmer Fred podcast, brought to you today by Smart Pots and Dave Wilson Nursery. Let’s go!

CUCUMBER GROWING BASICS, Part 1

Farmer Fred 1:55

Awhile back we were talking about the top 10 vegetables that are grown by gardeners in these United States. And I was surprised to learn that the number two most popular vegetable grown in the United States are cucumbers. Who knew? I thought it would be peppers, or maybe zucchini. No. Zucchini was number six; sweet peppers were number three. Cucumbers were number two. I'm not a big fan of cucumbers. But I know someone who is.

Debbie Flower

Yeah. I love cucumbers!

Farmer Fred

That would be Debbie Flower America's favorite retired college horticultural professor, who loves cucumbers.

Debbie Flower

I do.

Farmer Fred

But my heavens, cucumbers have a lot of problems. And I bet sometime this summer we're going to hear from people who say, “What happened to my cucumbers? The flowers look funny. The fruit looks funny, it tastes bad.” What's going on?

Debbie Flower  2:43

What's going on? Well, cucumbers are a vine. And so they need some space. They are in the cucurbitaceae family, so they have boy flowers and girl flowers. And that's part of the pollination problem. That, and they need regular moisture. If you let the plants dry out between irrigations, that's when your fruit tastes bad. There's more and more breeding going on to prevent that. We're getting closer to the season of erratic watering, but basically the soil needs to be moist, not wet, but moist, all the time. So cucumbers are a warm season plant, a warm season annual. They need soil temperatures to be quite warm when you seed them. And you typically want to direct seed them, not start them ahead of time.

Farmer Fred

Sounds like zucchini.

Debbie Flower

Like zucchini, like melons, like pumpkins. Those plants are all similar in that when they get root bound in a container, it dwarfs them and they will never grow very big. You do it once in your gardening life and you’ll remember it. It's such a disappointment. So, I just tried my second time planting my cucumber seeds. Yesterday, I planted some old seeds and that might be my problem. In general, you don't want to keep seeds more than two years and these were two year old seeds. And I stored them correctly, dry, in the refrigerator, over the two years, but they just didn't germinate. So yesterday I planted fresh seed. So I would advise starting with fresh seed, planted directly when your night temperatures have settled at 50 to 55 degrees Fahrenheit or greater. They need six to eight hours of sun, that's considered full sun. They need well drained, fertile soil and regular moisture.

Farmer Fred

Can you grow them in containers?

Debbie Flower

You can. There are some bush type cucumbers that are smaller and can be grown in containers. But the containers should be pretty big, 15 to 25 inches tall and across, or a half barrel. Make sure the pots have drainage holes and if they are dark color on the outside, wrap them in aluminum foil or paint them white or put something some with a lighter color on the outside somehow.

Farmer Fred  4:59

According to the Cucumber heads at UC Davis, they recommend for container-grown cucumbers these varieties: Pickle Bush, Potluck, Park’s Bush Whopper, Salad bush, Spacemaster, and Bush champion.

Debbie Flower  5:13

Notice the word “Bush” is used a lot.

Farmer Fred  5:15

Yeah, that tells you something about it. I would think, though, that much like zucchini, some early season disappointments with cucumbers would be: you see the flowers, you get excited. But either there's no fruit, or what fruit develops, doesn't look very good.

Debbie Flower  5:32

And doesn't last. Yeah, it's very small and it turns yellow and falls off. That's because it has two types of flowers,  the male flower and the female flower. And the flowers themselves, to the untrained eye, look exactly the same. But when you look at the stem that attaches the flower to the plan, you get a clue. Male flowers attach with a straight stem, and  female flowers are attached to what looks like a baby cucumber. And that's  the fruit that will form if it gets pollinated. So actually, the insides of the flowers are different from each other. One has the pollen and the other one has the stigmatic surface that receives the pollen and allows the pollination to occur and the fruit to form. So it's a morning job for the pollinator, which can be bees, or it can be you. They worked on solving this a lot in breeding, so it isn't quite as pronounced as it used to be. But the first bunch of flowers used to all be males. Now it's the first few. And there were no females in sight, but the pollen has to be ripe. And the stigmatic surface has to be receptive. And there has to be a pollinator there to move the pollen from the boy flower to the girl flower. So it's a morning job. You can get up, go outside. I take off the male flower, take off the petals, and touch the tip of the male flower to the inside of the female flower. And that transfers the pollen and then you're going to get fruit.

Farmer Fred  6:57

You don't even need an artist’s brush.

Debbie Flower

No, you don't.

Farmer Fred

That's pretty nifty, if you are doing it  that way. I would think, though, that weather plays a big part in successful pollination. These flowers are only going to develop when the temperature is in a certain range,

Debbie Flower  7:09

Right. These are warm season crops. And so, if you have very fluctuating temperatures, you may not get them.

Farmer Fred  7:15

If it's too cold or too hot. Either the male or the female won't cooperate, right? It's probably the female that is uncooperative.

Debbie Flower  7:22

I'd say the male. I know they always want to play but…

Farmer Fred  7:25

Yeah, we're always ready. But no, if it's too hot or they get headaches or something. I don't know. Blossom end rot. I wouldn't think blossom end rot would be a problem outside of tomatoes and peppers.

Debbie Flower  7:39

I've seen it on squash. Yeah, I had one growing in a compost pile. I just let it grow. And it got blossom end rot. And you will read that it is due to calcium insufficiency in the fruit. And that's probably what it is. But in most cases, there's enough calcium available in the soil for plants to take it up. There's just not a regular source of water to take it to the plant roots. And so it comes back to regular watering again,

Farmer Fred  8:05

When choosing a cucumber variety, we talked about what's best for a container, the Bush types. But for consumption, what is the difference between a slicing cucumber and a pickling cucumber?

Debbie Flower 8:17

As far as I noticed, it’s size. The pickling cucumbers tend to only grow to be cigar size or smaller, a few inches, four to six inches and not really fat. I don't know if anybody else remembers getting the cucumber out of the…barrel in the local store.

Farmer Fred

For a second there, I thought you're gonna say Crackerjack box.

Debbie Flower  8:37

I never got one of those in a Crackerjack box! If you had that barrel experience, you can picture the size of the cucumber. What we buy in the store now is all cut up in various ways. But I have pickling cucumbers that are regular slicing cucumbers, and I probably didn't get the texture that would be what the pickle connoisseur might look for, because of the amount of water in the fruit, etc, etc. But I just would pick them young and pickle them or slice them; or, pickle them when there were a lot left.

Farmer Fred  9:06

One nice thing about cucumbers, because they require a warm soil in order to get started, they actually mature rather quickly.

Debbie Flower 9:16

Yeah, they're fast growers. They take off once they're out of the ground, as long as they have nutritious soil and about an inch of water a week. So, they’ll mature in about two months or so. Two months to get a fruit.

Farmer Fred  9:28

All right. So you could plant in June and have cucumbers by the end of August.

Debbie Flower

Yes, it's cucumber planting season.

Farmer Fred

Do you plant them the same way that you would plant zucchini or summer squash, six on a hill? And then thin them out to the strongest one? Or, as some people do, ignore them at let them take over the garden.

Debbie Flower  9:44

On seed packets I don’t see a discussion of the hill as much. But the packets do mention to plant several in one location and then thin them out. And you need to space them, depending on whether you're going to trellis them or not. They could be as little as 12 inches apart if you're going to grow a vine and cucumber on a trellis, although I find that to be a little close. Or, you could let them sprawl across the ground, in which they need to be five or six feet apart.

Farmer Fred  10:05

That brings up another good point. We have received a lot of emails in the past, from people who grow cucumbers on trellises. And they seem to really like that.

Debbie Flower  10:13

I like that, too.

Farmer Fred

Tell us about that.

Debbie Flower

Cucumbers have tendrils which occur in the leaf node. That’s where the leaf is attached, and they can wrap themselves around something thin, but they can't wrap themselves around a piece of bamboo, for example. That's a little too big. But something thin, like a cattle panel or string. Some people make a structure and have string hanging down from it. And when the tendrils touch it, there is a plant response to touch. The tendrils wind themselves around the trellis. If you don't have the right diameter  for the tendril to twist around, you can always use old stockings, which I don't wear anymore, to encase the fruit and tie it up or to tie the plant itself to the structure that you're using as a trellis.

Farmer Fred 11:02

You're in the 21st century now. We now would use out of date USB cables.

Debbie Flower  11:06

There you go. Yes. I've seen baby underwear, children's underwear, to cradle the fruit. That's clever.

Farmer Fred 11:17

Out at the Fair Oaks Horticulture Center, they have repurposed some old umbrella frames. You know how umbrella fabric get torn in the wind, but the frame is intact. So they have mounted these umbrella frames in the soil, and run strings down from the bare arms. They anchor the strings or small rope into the ground and allow either beans or cucumbers or whatever to spiral their way up to the top.

Debbie Flower

Nice.

Farmer Fred

I would think I would want something stronger. Like you mentioned, a piece of cattle fencing or some sort of 12 gauge wire or six inch mesh, maybe even concrete reinforcement wire, but that might be a little flimsy right? But you could still do it that way.

Debbie Flower  11:58

I grew it on a trellis that went above my head, and of course the plant grew up there. And then I couldn't reach the fruit. So beware.

Farmer Fred  12:08

Okay. I wonder if it would work on a pallet that has been placed on an angle and supported by T-posts? We talked about that method with Gail Pothour, Master Gardener, recently. She was using it to grow Butter Belly squash. And it had no trouble attaching to the wooden slats. They crawled right up. Now I don't know if a cucumber would do that. Because you said it couldn't grip it.

Debbie Flower  12:34

Yeah. But squash typically has a tendril, as well. So maybe the roughness of the wood leaves little splinters that they can wrap around.

Farmer Fred  12:42

Both for the plant and in your hand.

Debbie Flower

Yes.

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CUCUMBER GROWING BASICS, Part 2

Farmer Fred

Let's talk about some cucumber pests that might come your way. According to the University of California's Integrated Pest Management site, among the invertebrate pests that can attack your cucumbers are: aphids, armyworms, crickets, cucumber beetles, cutworms darkling beetles, dried fruit beetles, earwigs, flea beetles, grasshoppers, leaf hoppers, leaf miners, loopers, nematodes, seed corn maggots, snails and slugs. Also Spider mites, squash bugs, stink bugs, thrips, whiteflies, wire worms. What are your favorites on that list?

Debbie Flower  15:17

Wow, that's a lot of things. Yeah, a lot of those are sort of, I want to say, generalized pest problems, such as aphids that you'll see on many garden plants. Cutworms just like seedlings. And so when you plant the seed in the ground, you put a collar around it of some sort. I have this box of mini Dixie Cups in my house, and I came across this recently and thought, what do I have these for? Well, I used to pop the bottoms out and push the little cup into the soil around the seedling. Cutworms travel near the surface of the soil over to the seedling, and chew around the stem.

Farmer Fred  15:53

Do earwigs do the same thing?, Earwigs get a bad rap because they are usually going after dead organic matter and are only going to go after a plant if there's nothing else there. Right?

Debbie Flower  16:00

If you don't have a lot of organic matter for them to eat, then they'll go after a plant.

Farmer Fred  16:04

So a Dixie cup would solve that issue for earwigs, too.

Debbie Flower  16:06

I suppose so. I don't think they can get into it. But they could climb that you know. You find them in buds and things but I don't know that they could climb a Dixie Cup. The other thing my mother used to use was half an empty toilet paper tube, when the toilet paper is gone.

Farmer Fred  16:21

And that's another way to trap earwigs as well.

Debbie Flower

Yes, it is. But moist.

Farmer Fred

Yeah, moisten it up, and stick it in a dark place near where they are. They might just crawl in.

Debbie Flower  16:30

They would go in there during the day. Yes, that's a possibility.

Farmer Fred 16:34

However you bring up an interesting new sport that may take off in fraternities. It would be to take a Dixie cup, and have earwig races to see if they can crawl up and in. Place the Dixie cup upright over a plant. That way they'd have to sort of have to climb up and outward.

Debbie Flower

Yeah, they'd have to climb out. Right. And it's waxy. Yeah.

Farmer Fred

And you know, you could toughen it up by having a moat below that of vegetable oil that they would drown in yes.

Debbie Flower  17:04

If they fell, that would be the end of them Yeah. There are traps for earwigs. For aphids, you hit him with a spray of water. If you're growing on the ground, they are always on the back of the leafs. They may be in other parts of the plant too. But if you've got aphids on a cucumber, they're going to be on the back of the leaves. And that's a hard place to spray with water if you're growing on the ground.

Farmer Fred  17:28

Cucumber beetles seem aptly named.

Debbie Flower  17:31

Yes, they do. But I can't say I've ever had them as a problem.

Farmer Fred  17:36

But they also have a lot of close relatives as well. The squash bugs go after the plants as well. And the problem with cucumber beetles, is it just glancing at it, you might say, “oh, look at the cute Ladybug”. And it's not a ladybug.  It's a Western spotted cucumber beetle.

Debbie Flower  17:52

Right. And there are there are spotted ones and striped ones. And they can introduce a bacterium into the plant. So that is one that you really want to have some control over.

Farmer Fred  18:04

Now it says here, according to the University of California, that most older plants can support substantial numbers of pests without serious damage. The best strategy for most vegetable gardens may be to place protective cloth over emerging plants and remove it when the plants are old enough to tolerate damage. There you go. Row covers.

Debbie Flower  18:22

Row covers. Yes, yeah, that would work for a lot of pests. Yes, it does. Keeps them away.

Farmer Fred  18:26

Well, since we're on the subject of Bad Voodoo for cucumbers, the diseases that can strike cucumbers as they're growing in your yard have sad names like damping off, powdery mildew, downy mildew phytophthora, root rot. Wow.

Debbie Flower  18:43

Cucumbers are susceptible, obviously. But yeah, root rot is a soil borne disease that in areas where there's too much water. And we talked about having to water those cucumbers a lot. And there are some issues with it. One would be Phytophthora. Another would be fusarium and verticillium, which are also soilborne. And if you know you have those problems, especially the fusarium and verticillium, you can get resistant cultivars.

Farmer Fred 19:10

So look for letters such as V and F on the seed packet.

Debbie Flower  19:13

To avoid diseases, right. Yeah, the phytophthora, many plants get that, but you need a lot of standing water. Another plant problem for cucumbers is Alternaria or leaf spot. The older leaves will turn brown and get crispy and start to fall off. And that's due to free water. And many diseases do. Both bacterial and fungal diseases need standing water. That means a droplet of water on the plant in order for the spore of the disease to germinate and enter the plant. And so if you're irrigating overhead, and I do I use micro emitters in my garden, and so it sprays on the plants. The plants do get wet, and so that wetness can allow the diseases to form. But I make sure that I water very early in the morning. And I live in a very dry climate. And so by the time the sun is up, I've just watered. It dries up so fast that these diseases can't infect the plants. If you're in a much more humid place, that's not going to happen necessarily, you're not going to get that drying to happen. And you're probably gonna get more rain, which  can cause that water to be there for the diseases to form. And so you may need to increase your spacing, so that the plant can get more airflow. Trellising would be a really good idea so that the plant can get more airflow, and it can all dry out. Also,  look for those resistant cultivars.

Farmer Fred 20:41

Yeah, I'm surprised at some of the recommendations on the back of some seed packets for cucumbers where talk about spacing, to thin them out so that they're five feet apart.

Debbie Flower  20:50

Yeah, that would be if you're not trellising them, right. Although the plants, you know, we put them in, and we got these little tiny plants, but they get big by the end of the season.

Farmer Fred  21:00

Well, there's that too. And then there's the process of thinning them out much like zucchini. People may be reluctant because they don’t want to hurt that little plant, right?

Debbie Flower  21:07

People don't want to thin. Thinning should be cutting the plant at the soil level with a sharp tool, such as scissors. Or pruning shears. Leaving the roots alone, so that you're not disturbing the roots of the one you're keeping. And I don't know how many people that I've said that to. And then I watch them pull the plant out and move it to someplace else. Survival is sometimes, yes, and sometimes no. Yeah, people don't want to kill the plant. And I understand that completely. But realize, I don't plant according to the package directions, I don't plant three to a hill and then take two out or whatever. If I'm suspicious that my seed is is old and not going to grow very well or it's something that's difficult to get to germinate, I will plant more than one. But then I'll come back and cut that puppy out, the extra one.

Farmer Fred  21:52

By the way, she doesn't literally mean a puppy.

Debbie Flower  21:55

I'll cut that plant out. But I don't like some seed packages. It will say, “plant one every two inches and then come back and thin to every 12 inches”. Like really, why should you regularly get rid of all these extra plants?

Farmer Fred

They're in business to make money.

Debbie Flower

They are. Realize that when you read the seed packet. Seed packets are wonderful. They have so much information. They're so worth reading. And I love reading them. But some stuff like that irritates me.

Farmer Fred  22:19

Yeah, I can understand that. One of the more common complaints about cucumbers though, is as they mature, and folks go to bite into it, it's bitter. What causes the bitterness and how the you get rid of it?

Debbie Flower  22:33

It's the irregular watering that causes the bitterness. And I've heard all kinds of things. And I don't know if they're all old wives’ tales, or what. But it's pretty difficult to get rid of it. Removing the skin can help. I had a friend who said cut off the end, just a little bit of the end, and then rub it back and forth over what's left and you get this frothy stuff and that gets rid of the bitterness, I'm not sure about that.

Farmer Fred  23:02

There is something to cutting it off. Cutting off the ends and taking the skin off.

Debbie Flower  23:05

Yes, that helps remove some of the bitterness. Not always all of it, though. So the bitterness occurs mostly in the stem end. So that's the end of the fruit that was attached to the plant. And take off the skin. So if you do get a bitter cucumber, and I've actually purchased one or two from the grocery store, and then found them to be such, you want to take that stem end off and a little bit of the fruit and then peel the cucumber completely. And if it's still bitter, maybe peel another layer off.

Farmer Fred 23:35

So the stem end would be the end that doesn't come to a point. That would have a scar on it. Right?

Debbie Flower

Yes, yes. Yeah.

Farmer Fred

And I would think, too, that harvesting when they're fairly young might help mitigate bitterness.

Debbie Flower  23:48

Because it's a chemical that forms over time in the in the fruit. And the longer it stays on the plant, the more of that chemical that can form.

Farmer Fred  23:56

So slicing cucumbers, probably eight to 10 inches is harvest time?

Debbie Flower  24:01

Right or not. I grow Chelsea Prize and they can get to be 15 inches.

Farmer Fred 24:07

if you disappear for a day.  And the pickling types, even small ones, eat those about when they are three or four inches long?The little ones? Yeah, okay. I imagine cucumbers do not play well with weeds either. So you do want to weed any patch where you're going to plant cucumbers, right? Especially if it's bindweed or Bermuda grass.

Debbie Flower 24:26

The cucumbers are heavy feeders and they want everything to themselves. They don't share well.

Farmer Fred  24:31

You haven't mentioned all your favorite cucumber varieties.

Debbie Flower  24:36

I've grown Straight 8 quite a bit. But my favorite is Chelsea Prize. I try other ones periodically. And then I come back to Chelsea Prize.

Farmer Fred  24:46

When we were talking to Gail Pothour, local master gardener and vegetable head, a few weeks ago about cucumbers, she likes to grow heirloom cucumbers and her favorites were Green Fingers Silver Slicer, Alibi Armenian cucumber.

Debbie Flower  25:01

I don't like Armenian. I grew them one year and I didn't like them at all. I don't know what it is about me and that one.

Farmer Fred  25:06

Burpless cucumbers. Is there such a thing?

Debbie Flower  25:08

There are many that are marketed as burpless. I don't have the burping problem. I can't attest to how effective they are.

Farmer Fred  25:19

Cucumbers, though, if you're fond of them, you can grow it, and then when you harvest it, I guess you can eat it fresh, put it into stir fry, or make pickles.

Debbie Flower  25:27

Or salads. There are some good cucumber salads, with dill and yogurt.

Farmer Fred  25:36

ew. Why don't you just throw tuna in the mix?

Debbie Flower  25:38

Oh, that sounds good.

Farmer Fred 25:42

All right, anything else on cucumbers?

Debbie Flower  25:45

If you're growing the cucumber, either trellising it or if growing them on the ground, mulching the soil is a good idea. It helps retain the moisture that you have applied to the soil, and slows down the loss of soil moisture from that soil. And we know we want that even moisture for the plant so that we don't get the bitterness. The other is, if you are allowing the plant to grow on the ground as a market farmer might do, because it takes more time and effort to trellis the cucumber. But you still will want to go around and maybe put some straw underneath each fruit so that they do not rot from touching that moist soil.

Farmer Fred  26:18

I'm waiting for your annual vegetable buying advice: when you go to a nursery how to pick out a cucurbit plant. It's not easy.

Debbie Flower  26:28

I prefer to direct seed them. Because if there are too many leaves, true leaves, on the plant, it's an indication the plant is rootbound. And it will never grow very big. So what's that mean? Often they're sold in a three or four inch pot, that's the distance across the top of the pot. And they often look like they've just germinated. So they will have what are called the cotyledons. On those initial leaves, teach one looks like a half of a bean. That's the seed food that that came in the seed, that the plant had started from. And then they'll have what are the true leaves, which tend to have pointy tips to them, and they might be hairy. And three, I wouldn't buy anything with more than three true leaves. So it would be the cotyledons plus three true leaves in a three or four inch pot. And if I'm feeling bold, I'll just knock that puppy out of the pot carefully, correctly. Putting my hand over the top and my fingers around the stem, tipping the whole thing over as if I were pouring it out, squeezing the container, pull it out. The media will be fairly well knitted together by the roots. And I will look at that root system. If there are lots of roots on the outside of that bunch of media that I just poured out, I won't buy that plant.

Farmer Fred  27:47

Especially if those roots are going round and round. Can you really untangle a squash plant or a cucumber plant? Or does that damage the roots?

Debbie Flower  27:55

It would damage the roots. Cutting the roots, which I do with great regularity on anything I plant would also damage the roots and they just can't take it. I did it once. I probably started it myself in a container and put it in the ground and the leaves never got bigger than my my hand and cucumber leaves can get very big and the vine never got more than three feet long.

Farmer Fred  28:16

So again with cucumbers: plant directly from seed and apply regular water. Is very irregular watering a reason for bitterness as well? I

Debbie Flower  28:28

If it was irregular watering, yes. Irregular watering and blossom end rot would be due to irregular watering. But you don't want it sitting in water. You want it well drained. So if you have soil that retains a lot of moisture, like clay soil, make a mound and plant on the top of the mound.

Farmer Fred 28:42

I tell you what; those container-grown cucumbers sound better and easier.

Debbie Flower  28:45

Especially for the moisture, it’s hard to keep a container moist.

Farmer Fred  28:51

yes, it is. But again, a pot inside a pot. That can help. Alright, cucumbers. It's the number two most popular backyard garden vegetable grown. You might want to give it a try this year. Thanks, Debbie.

Debbie Flower  29:03

Thank you Fred.

DAVE WILSON NURSERY

Farmer Fred 29:08

Are you thinking of growing fruit trees? Maybe you already are, but you want to know more about them. Well, you probably have a million questions. Like, which fruit trees will grow where I live? What are the tastiest fruits? When is harvest time? How do I care for these trees? The answers are nearby.  Just go to dave wilson dot com, click on the Home Garden tab at the top of the page. Also in that home garden tab, you’ll find a link to their fruit and nut harvest chart, so you can be picking delicious, healthy fruits from your own yard from May to December here in USDA Zone 9. And you’re just a click away with the informative You Tube video series at DaveWilson.com. And as part of that video series, they will walk you through the simple process of using the Dave Wilson website to find their trees, either at a nearby local nursery or a mail order source. That's Dave Wilson nursery, the nation's largest grower of fruit trees for the backyard garden. They've got planting tips, taste test results, and information about their revolutionary backyard orchard culture techniques, which explain how you can have a cornucopia of different fruit trees in a small backyard. Your harvest to better health begins at DaveWilson.com.

BEYOND THE GARDEN BASICS NEWSLETTER/PODCAST

Farmer Fred 30:33

Nothing beats the show of garden roses in the springtime. Savvy gardeners are expanding that enjoyment to the indoors, by planting the best rose varieties for long lasting cut flowers. What are those rose varieties? How do you bring in those roses to keep them long-lasting? And, what are the best ways to display those roses? Here’s a hint: combine them with other plants.

Master Rosarian Debbie Arrington, the President of the Sacramento Rose Society has the advice for us. Plus, she tells us how to get those roses to put on a dazzling display for an upcoming backyard event, such as a wedding, a summer barbecue, or a Labor Day holiday party. Here’s another hint, it’s all about timing.

It’s all in the latest Beyond the Garden Basics newsletter and podcast, The Best Roses to Grow for Cut Flowers. Available now, for free.

For current newsletter subscribers, look for the issue entitled, “The Best Roses to Grow for Cut Flowers.” If you are already a subscriber, it’s probably in your email, waiting for you right now. Or, you can start a subscription, it’s free! Find the link to the Beyond the Garden Basics newsletter and podcast in today’s show notes, or at Substack. And, you sign up at the newsletter link at our homepage, gardenbasics dot net.

HOW BEES COMMUNICATE - THE WAGGLE DANCE

Farmer Fred  31:57

Have you heard about the Waggle Dance? No, it's not an obscure Chubby Checker record from the 1960s. Nor is it the follow up to the Soupy Sales song, “Do the Mouse”. The Waggle Dance is something bees do. And it's how they communicate to their hive mates, the other bees, telling them where the good stuff is, where the pollen is, and how to get there. iI’s a very elaborate dance. If you're like me, if you're a gardener, and you spend a lot of time in the garden, sometimes you'll just sit down and watch the bees, and wonder: “How the heck did they find these plants?” What is going on in their communication? We're talking to a gentleman who has studied this for a living. He and fellow scientists have an article published in the Journal of Science, and it's all about the Waggle Dance and how they discovered it. We're talking with Dr. James Nieh. He's the Associate Dean School of Biological Sciences at the University of California, San Diego. He's a professor in the Department of Ecology, Behavior, and Evolution. And I always like talking to university bee specialists, because they seem to have a fun job. And it sounds like you have a very interesting job. I don't know how you get the bees to slow down long enough to study their dance.

Dr. James Nieh 33:11

Thank you, Fred. It's a pleasure to talk to you. We actually don't have them stand still. We watch them as they're in motion. But you're right, it sometimes can be a challenge to move with the bees, as they're dancing.

Farmer Fred

So let's talk about the whole thrust of your paper. And if people want to read more about it, there's a very good explanation that you wrote for  the March 2023 edition of Modern Farmer magazine and website. It’s called “Unlocking Secrets of the Honeybee Dance Language.” What was your impetus for studying this?

Dr. James Nieh

One of the things we wanted to learn is, why is it that some animals, like human beings, songbirds, and naked mole rats, why do they have to learn language? We know that other animals, many of them are actually born with the ability to have a perfect animal communication system or animal language without the need for learning. That is what actually motivated us to look at honey bees, because honey bees have a very sophisticated animal language. And we suspect because it is so complicated, that learning might be involved.

Farmer Fred

And we have known for a few decades that bees do communicate by movement, haven't we?

Dr. James Nieh

Yes, that's right. In fact, it was something that Aristotle even suspected thousands of years ago. Although if you look at the translation, there's a little bit of uncertainty if he knew about the Waggle Dance. But some historians of science say that he did. And it really is a Waggle Dance, it is a shake your booty. But what is amazing is the amount of information that is communicated via a bee to the fellow bees about where the pollen is, and how to get there. It's truly remarkable. And it's the most complex example of animal language that communicates something like location that we know of.

Farmer Fred 35:00

And also according to your paper, the movement also reveals the quality of a pollen resource.

Dr. James Nieh  35:03

That's right. When bees are repeating this figure-eight motion multiple times, the more times they repeat it, the higher the quality of the resource. And there are two motions, there's the waggle phase, if you imagine the bee as a little arrow, she's running forward with her head pointed forward, and her abdomen is waggling. So that's called the waggle run because she's running while waggling. And then there's something called the return phase where she's returning back in a semicircle. And that creates one half of the figure eight. And that return phase is faster, the more excited she is about the food. So it's almost as if she's more eager to come back and do more Waggles.

Farmer Fred  35:42

And is this just happening at the hive? Anybody who's sat for a while and watched bees at work, they'll sometimes think, “oh my goodness, I'm going to be stung. Look at that bee as it's going after that pollen. It’s shaking its behind at me, like it's getting its sting, getting ready to come at me.” But they're just communicating.

Dr. James Nieh  36:01

They would normally do this only at the nest. And it's true that they can sometimes do it, especially when the nest is crowded, on the outside of the nest. So if you have a standard wood box, kind of on the board standing in front. But typically they're going to be doing it inside the nest, you can see a bee flying around and moving at food sources. But that's not the Waggle Dance. That's something very different.

Farmer Fred 36:25

Oh, maybe the are gonna sting me after all. By the way, let's figure out the sex of bees here that do go out foraging. Are they females or males?

Dr. James Nieh 36:35

All the bees that are foraging or doing any work at all are females. The males only have one job, and when that job is done, they die.

Farmer Fred  36:44

Oh, okay. Sad life but no. The Waggle Dance and the intricacy of their instructions are dependent upon not only being born with some of that knowledge, but also learning tips from others.

Dr. James Nieh  36:59

That's right, the honeybees in a colony we discovered are actually learning how to dance from older and more experienced honey bees.

Farmer Fred 37:06

That's great. As long as, I guess, there are older bees around. You've done experiments where you have isolated the bees from the older generation.

Dr. James Nieh  37:15

That's right. And it's very interesting. Honeybees have a division of labor, meaning that they do different jobs depending on how old they are. When honeybees first emerged as adults, they start off as nurse bees, you're taking care of the larvae, and also the queen. Then, as they get older into their teenage days, you might say, because they don't live for years, they live for about 35-45 days, they start taking out the trash and building the comb, doing chores around the house. And then finally, when they get older, they start to work as a guard bee. And as a forager. And of course as a forager, then they start to Waggle Dance. So the key is, if you start out with a colony that's created only with day-old bees, they are all the same age, and then they're going to march through this progression of jobs with each other. So they really have no opportunity to observe Waggle dancers because no one in the colony is of Waggle dancing age.

Farmer Fred  38:14

So I would imagine that group wasn't very successful.

Dr. James Nieh  38:17

They actually were able to produce Waggle dances that we could definitely recognize. But in comparison to control colonies that had the same number of bees, but they had bees of all ages, and therefore they could observe and did observe other bees before they first danced. The experimental colonies were the ones that only had young bees, they could never watch older bees dance. And they had three problems in the way they danced. The first is they didn't communicate the direction very well. The second is they over-communicated the distance, meaning that they overshot where they were telling other bees to go. And thirdly, they had dances that didn't have the correctly formed figure eight pattern, those bees that had those difficulties.

Farmer Fred 39:00

Did you reintroduce them to an older generation of bees? And did their dance evolve because of that exposure to the older bees?

Dr. James Nieh 39:11

Great questions. So we came back 20 days later, when they were full adults, they had now achieved 95% of their full life expectancy. In the case of bees, they don't actually perform poor dances at this age, they're basically at their peak. And what we found is that the bees that weren't dancing very well, they were able to improve how they communicated direction and making properly formed figure eight dances. In those two aspects, they got better. But the thing about overshooting the distance, communicating distances that were too far away, that was something that they never recovered. We also did a preliminary experiment that we didn't report about in this paper. But we actually introduced another group of young bees, and had them be taught, in essence, by these older bees that were raised in the experimental colony. What we found is that these bees that were taught had normal direction and communication, they also did the normal figure eight pattern, but they learned, strangely enough, the incorrect distance encoding. So it seems that communication of distance, and the way it was disrupted, could be passed on from one generation to the next.

Farmer Fred  40:26

A very good argument for keeping the old people around awhile.

Dr. James Nieh  40:30

Exactly. They do need to learn and teach the young ones.

Farmer Fred 40:34

Yes. How do they point out the direction? Does it have to do something with the sun, I would imagine?

Dr. James Nieh 40:40

Yes,  I think the the easiest way to think about it is what the dance probably was before it evolved to it's more complicated state. All honeybee species can produce the Waggle Dance. And all of them can do it on a horizontal surface, literally pointing at the direction of the resource. So I think  that's the easiest way to think about it. Imagine that the honey bee, she's a little mapmaker. And what she's doing with her body is she's pointing forward with her head like an arrow. And she is pointing in the direction of the food source. So literally, if the food source is north, she's pointed north, if it's east, she's pointed east. Now, in that Waggle run, she's pointing in the direction, but also the farther away the food sources, the longer the waggle. So for example, if the food source is a mile away, she might be waggling about one second. But if it's two miles away, she might be waggling for about two seconds. So she's kind of showing in this little arrow that she's drawing, the direction and how far away it is. It's amazing. But you had brought up gravity, which is a really interesting point. So what if you can no longer dance, pointing directly at the food source? Honeycombs are vertically oriented? And in this case, they do a transposition and that's kind of a fancy word. But basically, if they're dancing on a vertical surface, and this is normally in the darkness of the nest, if they are dancing with their head, like an arrow pointed straight up, it means fly in the direction of the sun. Now, I don't mean fly into the sun, but I mean flight in the direction the sun, so imagine the sun on the horizon, and you're going to fly towards the sun on the horizon, and that will give you the right direction. Now, what about if the food source is opposite the direction of the sun, it's 180 degrees opposite the sun. Then the dancer will dance with her head, like an arrow pointing straight downwards. When she is inside the hive. Let's say the food source is 45 degrees to the left of the sun, then she dances 45 degrees to the left of the upright position.

Farmer Fred 42:51

I would think that bees would start their day when a certain temperature is reached. Or do they start their workday when the sun is out?

Dr. James Nieh  43:01

I think both factors are important. They need a certain minimum temperature in order to be able to fly. But typically they have a very strong circadian rhythm, meaning that like us, they're very influenced by the sun. And folks might appreciate now that we just sprung forward with our clocks, that for a little while, it's hard for us to wake up and get going at the right time. And the reason for that is that we have a certain biological rhythm that is responsive to the light. And the same is true of honeybees.

Farmer Fred  43:29

I think bees are much like me on my bicycle. I don't like to ride when it's windy. And bees, I would think if it's a windy day, they too wouldn't be waggling very much.

Dr. James Nieh 43:40

It's true that if they face some problems, I think they can still fly even with a somewhat significant wind. But if it's too windy, they probably wouldn't go out and forage. They just stay inside the nest.

Farmer Fred  43:52

Indeed. And that's why it's harder for almond growers in California to have enough good days in a row to get their almond crop pollinated. Do native bees have the same sort of skills, or is this something just reserved for honeybees?

Dr. James Nieh 44:05

So the only bees that can communicate the location of food sources are honeybees and stingless bees. Stingless bees are only found in the tropics, they are found in the New World tropics, like Brazil and Central America. And they are found in the Old World tropics and Africa, and Southeast Asia, but they're not found anywhere in the United States. So the only bees we have around here that can actually communicate food location are honeybees.

Farmer Fred  44:33

So the purpose of native bees, I guess, is… I don't know. What is the purpose of native bees?

Dr. James Nieh 44:38

So native bees are really important because they are here as part of our native ecosystem. And they've evolved along with many species of native plants, for example, if you've ever seen a barrel cactus,  these are  beautiful cacti that you find and they often have these beautiful yellow or other colored flowers. There is a cactus bee that specializes in, believe it or not, in pollinating barrel cacti. Honey bees will visit these flowers and can pollinate them. But when researchers have studied this, the native bee that's evolved or co-evolved with this cactus is actually a much  better pollinator when she visits. Many more seeds come out of that one visit than on a single honeybee visit. And that story is recapitulated over and over again, with many different kinds of bees. We will have buffalo gourd and many other kinds of plants where although honeybees can do the job, that native species is actually better. So I'll give you an example. Most folks like avocados. And avocados are a big crop, especially in Southern California. The native pollinator of avocados is a stingless bee, because avocados evolved in areas where there were stingless bees. Honeybees nowadays, of course, are brought in to do the job. But they are actually less efficient at it than the native bee. But unfortunately, we don't have stingless bees in this range. So I think that illustrates some of the importance of native bees for native plants, but also for certain agricultural crops. And I'll just add one final thing: we think about apples, and apples are wonderful. It turns out that native bees are better at pollinating apples than honey bees.

Farmer Fred 46:27

I did not know that apples required the attention of native bees. That's very interesting.

Dr. James Nieh  46:34

So there is a blue orchard bee that is important for pollinating apples. I think I have that right. But I do know it is a native bee. And you're right. Apples were really not native to North America. They were brought over. You think about the story of Johnny Appleseed. But in fact, even though they are introduced, it's the native bee that turns out to be much better than honey bees. I think that illustrates the importance of these very diverse native bees.

Farmer Fred 47:03

Going back to the avocado and the special bee it takes to pollinate the avocado. And maybe I should say not a special bee, but a bee that's better at pollinating. Because avocados have  “A” flowers and “B” flowers, that open up at different times of the day, so basically, they're only available for certain hours of the day, I would think that the stingless bee would have to visit that tree twice in the same day to achieve successful pollination for that avocado tree.

Dr. James Nieh 47:27

That's interesting. I actually haven't read the literature specifically on how it pollinates the avocado,  but it's quite possible that it’s like a honeybee going after the nectar or the pollen. That forager will go back to that same tree or that same grove multiple times throughout a day. So even though the flowers are open at different times of day, the bee will be there and be able to collect that pollen and then subsequently pollinate the female flowers.

Farmer Fred  47:56

One more thing about the Waggle Dance. And I love this part, too. You point out in Modern Farmer the fact that back at the hive, they have a dance floor.

Dr. James Nieh  48:04

That's right, and the dance floor is very different for each colony. Now part of that difference is that parts of it are relatively empty, or may have honey or may have pollen or may have brood. But in a natural colony, the ones that are built in trees, these typically don't have the beautiful flat combs that they have in beehives that humans provide. Because our goal is for beekeepers to have something very uniform that's easy to remove, check and harvest honey from inside. A natural colony, these combs are built. And then they sort of merge together and grow. I think if you've looked around on the internet or actually seen a natural colony, you'll see that they make these beautiful, complicated shapes. And I think that's very interesting, because it means that those shapes might be hard for a bee to Waggle Dance on because they're not perfectly flat. And we suspect that one of the reasons why bees may need to learn to Waggle is that through practice, they can master the dance floor that is in their own colony.

Farmer Fred 49:06

Without the benefit of a band, either. I would think your research isn't over. There's a lot more to learn about the relationship between younger bees and older bees, isn't there?

Dr. James Nieh  49:15

That's right. We would really like to understand if this distance encoding is transmitted from one generation to the next. And moreover, if it is, as we suspect, is actually adaptive, so each colony lives in a certain habitat, local environment where food is available, and where bees have to go certain distances. We think that each colony might have a dialect that is subtly adapted to those local conditions. Because that would be another reason for bees to need to learn how to Waggle Dance so they could learn from the wisdom of their elders, the bees that have been out there and know where the food is, and know the best way to communicate where that food is.

Farmer Fred  49:56

Just another example of the commandment, “Honor Thy Father and Thy Mother.”

Dr. James Nieh  50:00

Exactly. Very important.

Farmer Fred 50:02

You can read more about what Dr. James Nieh wrote about regarding the Waggle Dance, bees, and pollination by visiting modernfarmer.com and reading Dr. Nieh’s article that he wrote for “The Conversation”, that was reprinted by Modern Farmer. Or, you can go back to the source work that they published in the Journal of Science, the March 2023 edition, entitled, “Social Signal Learning of the Waggle Dance in Honeybees.” Why are we talking about this? Because one out of every three bites of food that you stick in your mouth comes to you, courtesy of a bee. Without bees, we wouldn't have much food. You want to disagree with that?

Dr. James Nieh  50:46

I totally agree that bees, honey bees, and native bees are very important.

Farmer Fred 50:51

Dr. James Nieh, with UC San Diego. He is the Associate Dean of the School of Biological Sciences. He is a professor of the Department of Ecology, Behavior and Evolution. And it's just a fascinating study about how bees communicate, by basically shaking their booty. It's the Waggle Dance. Doctor, I thank you so much for all this good information.

Dr. James Nieh  51:14

Thank you. It's been a pleasure and thank you for being interested in the story

FLASHBACK EPISODE OF THE WEEK - 151: Harvesting Popcorn. All About Pumpkins.

Farmer Fred  51:26

From the garden e-mail bag, Brenda writes in and asks:  “In years past, you gave some very specific advice about planting popcorn and ornamental corn. I would like to find that episode. I'm only planning to plant a few seeds. These are very fancy seeds and the corn is supposed to be 'jewel like'. I'm doing this for the grandkids so I'd like to have the best chance of getting it right. Thanks as always.

Brenda, If it is an ornamental corn, it can be grown and popped like popcorn, although it may not be as tasty as you might be want. Heavens knows, there are all sorts of heirloom and hybrid popcorn varieties that pop up and taste great, varieties you may have never heard of, but are worth planting if you enjoy popcorn.

The Flashback Episode of the week, Number 151 from November of 2021, Harvesting popcorn. And, it has bonus information on how to grow pumpkins, including the giant pumpkins. May and June are the months for planting popcorn and pumpkins. Go to your favorite podcast outlet and do a search for Episode 151. We will have a link to it in today’s show notes.  And you can also find this week’s Flashback podcast, Harvesting Popcorn and All About Pumpkins, as well as a transcript, at our home page, garden basics dot net.

Farmer Fred  52:50

The Garden Basics With Farmer Fred podcast comes out once a week, on Fridays. Plus the newsletter podcast, that comes with the Beyond the Garden Basics newsletter, continues, also released on Fridays. Both are free and are brought to you by Smart Pots and Dave Wilson Nursery. The Garden Basics podcast is available wherever podcasts are handed out, and that includes our home page, Garden Basics dot net. , where you can also sign up for the Beyond the Garden Basics newsletter and podcast. That’s Garden Basics dot net. or use the links in today’s show notes.  And thank you so much for listening.