Two weeks in a row one of my regular farmers’ market customers has been asking me if he could get some squash blossoms. Personally, I’d rather have the whole vegetable and assumed if I harvested the blossoms, I’d have no squash. Not so.

I learned squash plants grow male and female blossoms. Totally makes sense, of course — I just never thought about it much.

The female blossoms produce the squash vegetable. The male blossoms are important for fertilizing the females. Once the females are producing squash, though, the male’s job is done.

Since I have all the squash I can possibly use for the rest of this season already growing, I decided it was no harm in harvesting the male blossoms for my customer. The male blossoms have a straight, thin stalk whereas the female blossoms have a curved, thicker stalk and a little bulb at the bottom of the flower which is where the squash vegetable starts to grow. Learn something new from the garden every day.