Registering for this site allows you to access your order status and history. We will only ask you for information necessary to make the purchase process faster and easier. It means species plural, i. This is critical information for the seed saver, and some fundamental botany should explain why:. Varieties of the same species can cross pollinate; varieties of different species cannot cross pollinate.
Cross pollination produces a hybrid seed. Hybrids can be fun for seed breeders, but not for predictability within our own food systems. Let me give you a solid example:.
I grow the Tahitian Butternut Cucurbita moschata each year. It produces an extremely productive and massive fruit, is resistant to many fungal diseases and vine borers, and stores for up to 9 months. I rely upon this squash as a large part of my winter diet.
If the Tromboncino variety another Cucurbita moschata cross pollinates, then all those traits I rely upon are threatened in the seeds that I save. I may not even know the cross has happened until I have a basement of rotting squash in February, whereas I usually eat those squash all the way through May. Predictability should be a key component to our food systems. So, knowing which of your plants can and will cross pollinate is critical, and knowing the species is the first step.
Remember: A squash is not a squash is not a squash. A squash could be a Cucurbita pepo or a Cucurbita moschata or a Cucurbita maxima or a Cucurbita argyrosperma or Cucurbita ficifolia. Each of these distinct species have many variety options, but we can recognize broad traits between them.
All squash are grown as warm season annuals in North America. The only real difference between summer and winter squash is when we harvest. Summer squash are bred to taste yummy when harvested immature; winter squash are bred to taste yummy when fully mature. All squash are heavy feeders and will need a good quality rich soil to thrive, adding composted manure will keep them very happy. Remember that male flowers grow on tall, skinny stems, and female flowers grow close to the vine with an immature fruit at the base.
The ideal time to pollinate squash is in the morning as soon as your squash blossoms open and temperatures are mild. They tend to close up by early evening, so you might spend several days pollinating by hand if you want to get to them all.
Peel back or strip off the flower petals to reveal the anther. Using a soft, small paintbrush, lightly brush the anther of a male flower until the bristles are covered in pollen. Brush the stigma of a female flower a few times as if you were painting it and repeat until all the female flowers are pollinated. And within a few weeks, you can harvest that squash! If pollination did not take, cut off the rotting fruit. It will never develop into anything, and leaving it on the vine is an energy drain on the plant not to mention a landing pad for pests.
As for the male flowers? The No-Waste Vegetable Cookbook is my latest book. Garden Betty is where I write about modern homesteading, farm-to-table cooking, and outdoor adventuring — all that encompass a life well-lived outdoors. After all, the secret to a good life is Read more ». Brilliant, as always, and always something to learn from you. This will also help me respect all those male flowers more. So glad you posted this! This is my first year of growing squashes and my plants are full of flowers.
Did you know squash have male and female flowers? Male or female or both? Sex ed! Fascinating stuff. This is a great post! I loved this in-depth coverage of the process… thank you! As in other parts of life, the male flowers vastly outnumber the female flowers! Is it weird that I find this crazy interesting? Not weird at all, I geek out on this kind of stuff all the time! The process of pollination fascinates me. In my garden, the bees are most attracted to flowering herbs.
They also love flowering rosemary, parsley, cilantro, dill, and thyme. This is especially important in the vegetable and fruit realm, since reproduction is why we get tomatoes, peppers, apples, plums and such in the first place.
It also is important for producing seeds, as those arise from the reproductive process as well. Whether you knew it or not, flowers are not just different in appearance from plant to plant, but the ways in which they are pollinated and turn into fruit are different as well.
In a way of speaking, you could say that these flowers are hermaphroditic. These flowers may or may not be self-pollinated. Depending on species genetics, some plants can self-fertilize like tomatoes and beans and others require cross-pollination like apples. There are a few explanations — high heat causing aborted flowers or fruits or improper pollination, absence of pollinators, or, most likely, the fact that some of those flowers were never going to set fruit because they were male.
In answer, I have to explain that about half or more of the flowers on the plant are male and are, unfortunately, anatomically incapable of producing fruit. There are a few ways to tell male and female flowers apart when it comes to members of the cucurbit family. First, look at the base of the flower. If the base is swollen and looks like it is a tiny version of the mature fruit, then it is a female flower. If the base is just a straight stem in flowers, this stem is called a peduncle , then it is a male flower.
The second method is to look inside the flower. If there is one large central structure, called the pistil, that indicates the flower is female. Be patient, gardeners, squash will come. Squash plants produce separate male and female flowers on the same plant.
The male flowers contain the pollen, the male part the reproduction process. The female flowers have the ovary at their base. The ovary looks like a very small squash. This ovary will not develop and will be aborted, dropped off , of the plant if pollen is not moved from the male flower to female. The process is called pollination, resulting in fertilization, then the ovary will develop into the fruit, the squash.
The male flowers are produced and open a few days before the female flowers open. So the males are ready before the females.
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