For anyone who’s expecting to read a rant about the values of the youth of today actually, it’s about tulips and broad beans cross-pollinating. Not with each other – imagine the result!
It’s the tulips getting flirty with each other; White bride and Negrita producing strips. I may grow to like this ‘Whigrita’ but I want more white tulips. I see bulb buying and planting in my autumn future, hopefully with less flirtatious varieties.
Seriously, I’ve never seen this happen – anyone else?
The rest of the tulip bed are well behaved and keeping themselves to themselves.
At the other end of the spectrum are the broad beans in the polytunnel, they are growing beautifully and have a mass of flowers but not enough pollinators are getting in and beans aren’t forming. I was very excited when two bumblebees fly in on Sunday but they were too wide of girth for the beans and went for the easy to access peach blossom.
Ho hum
Allotment Life 
Could you pollinate them by hand, a small paintbrush perhaps. I had to shake the sweetcorn to pollinate it last year as it wasn’t windy enough to get the job done.
I tried that this afternoon. I need my glasses and more patience!
Maybe by the time you return to the task something else might have done the job for you, fingers crossed x
Hope so!
Aww, I have this sweet image of two portly bumblebees trying to get access to the bean flowers! Rather like a dear old puss I had years ago, Pansy, who had to do a little shimmy to get her generous undercarriage through the cat flap 🙂 Hope some more slimline pollinators find their way in!
I have never seen that happen! That’s exciting!
Do you like the new tulips name 😉