How to Know Which Vegetable & Fruit Crops Need Pollinators

How can you tell which garden vegetables or fruits require pollination to produce crops? Use these tips to know which crops require exposure to pollinators like bees or birds and those that can produce a harvest without them.

If you need help getting started, I share my favorite week-by-week vegetable garden seed sowing plan here.

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Which Fruits & Vegetables Need Pollinators

When we grow vegetables and fruits out in the open in our backyards, we usually don’t think much about pollination because it tends to happen naturally without our help. Some plants produce flowers, insects or birds or other animals come along and pollinate them, and we get crops at harvest time.

But, if you’ve had to cover up your crops with season extenders (polytunnel, cold frame, greenhouse) or insect netting to protect them from extreme weather or pests, some crops may be shielded from the pollinators they need.

So which crops need pollination and which ones do not?

A simple way to remember is to assign each plant to a category based on whether the part we eat is a fruit or not.

I’ll show you what I mean.

Two Basic Categories

1Fruits

• Fruits either need or benefit from pollination to produce a crop.

Group one is “fruits.”

The word “fruit” here is used in the botanical sense meaning anything with a seed inside, whether the fruit is sweet or not.

Many of the vegetables we eat are the fruits of flowering plants.

Examples include tomatoes, squashes, and peppers.

It also includes all the sweet things we commonly call fruits like apples and berries.

During the growth process, all of these plants will produce flowers which, if fertilized through pollination, can produce fruit—the crop we harvest.

Fruits either need or benefit from pollination to produce a crop.

2Vegetables

• Vegetables (that do not produce fruit) generally do not require pollination.

Group two are “vegetables,” meaning the parts of plants that don’t have seeds. This can be leaves, stems, immature flowers, or roots.

Examples include lettuces, asparagus, broccoli, beets, and onions.

Again, this is just concerning crops we use as food prior to the flowering stage.

This whole thing is generalized and I found some interesting exceptions while researching this information but overall the tip works:

• If you’re growing a plant for the fruit, it will need some sort of pollination.
• If you’re growing the plant for other parts like stems or leaves, it does not.

This vegetable category includes many of the cool season plants suitable for fall and winter growing when pollinators are not active.

I’ve made a printable list that you can save to your computer or print out (see below).

Fruit & Vegetable Pollinator Groups

Crops That Require Pollination

1Fruits & Berries With Seeds

Yes – Pollination is Required or Beneficial

While native bees and honey bees are common pollinators here in North America, countless other animals including insects, birds, mammals, and lizards also provide pollination services. Who pollinates what all depends on the plant and the animals they have co-evolved with.

It’s a good idea to look up the specific pollinators for your crops so you can watch out for them. Plant tags and seed packets sometimes also mention pollination needs.

The fruits listed above are the food crops we grow that need some form of pollination, meaning some way for the pollen to be delivered from the anther to the stigma, either by insect or wind.

Even if the plant is self-fertile or self-pollinating, it’s usually best for pollen to be exchanged between varieties for better quality and abundance.

Related: Do Plants Have Sexes?

Tomatoes are a good example of this. While they have “perfect” flowers, meaning each flower has both male stamen and female stigma, and theoretically they have what’s needed to pollinate themselves, in order to move the pollen, some agitation by wind or your hand is often needed.

Blueberries also have perfect flowers, but planting instructions always recommend having at least one other variety nearby to ensure the benefits of genetic diversification in berry production. One plant alone may produce a small crop but a cross-pollinated plant will provide better quality and numbers.

If you’re growing a crop that needs pollination but is housed in a protected space like a greenhouse or hoop tunnel, it should be opened up to the outdoors on sunny days when the plant is in flower and insects are flitting about.

Indoor growers may need to pollinate by hand.

Crops That Do Not Require Pollination

2Vegetable Leaves, Stems, Roots, and Immature Flowers

No pollination required

Everything in this group does not require pollination because we’re eating other parts of the plant—not fruit.

You’ll also notice that many vegetables in this group can be harvested and eaten at any stage of growth.

¹ Peas are “fruits” but do not need a pollinator. I discovered this years ago when mine flowered and fruited indoors with great abundance.

The printable list of both categories is available in the Resources section.

There are lots of opportunities to forage these foods throughout the growing season.

Resources

Other familiar pollinators from these groups include solitary bees, bumblebees, stingless bees, carpenter bees, orchid bees, squash bees, hover flies, blow flies, butterflies, hummingbirds, and the wind.

Printable List

I hope this helps to simplify it. If it fruits, it needs a pollinator. If not, it doesn’t.

~Melissa the Empress of Dirt ♛