The private lives of pumpkins

The pumpkin season is really kicking off. Last week I counted 16 Golden Nugget pumpkins and although that's a fairly decent harvest, it's nothing on the combined variety harvest of 70 last year. Just in the last week the self sown compost pumpkins (most probably a cross variety of the ones I grew last year) have really taken off, with so many more potential pumpkins forming.

Pumpkins are self fertile, meaning that you only need one vine to produce fruit (unlike the passionfruits!), although they still rely on bees or insects to pollinate the flowers. Flowers are either male or female, with the female flower having the embryo pumpkin at the base of the flower (bottom flower in the picture).

At the beginning of the season I always like to hand pollinate to ensure that I get some pumpkins produced. To do this you can take a soft paintbrush and dab it in the pollen from the male flower and then dab it in the pollen of the female flower. I have very helpful children who paint all different flowers in the garden for me, and are pretty good at painting 'matching' flowers and not tomatoes with pumpkins, which doesn't do anything much other than keep the children busy for a bit.

My preferred method is to just break off the whole male flower with some stalk for a handle, remove the petals and leave the pollen covered stamen in place. Gently dab the male stamen on the female stamen to mix the pollen and you're done. If you do this with a young flowers of the same variety that haven't opened properly yet, then you can tie closed the female flower and tag the pumpkin for seed saving.

Cucurbits cross pollinate very easily and although it doesn't effect the current year's harvest, if cross pollination has occurred seeds saved will not be true to the vegetable they have come from. That's how my compost pumpkins form, cross pollinated seeds of last years pumpkins coming up from the seeds thrown into the compost.

If you are wanting to seed save, you'll need to hand pollinate and protect flowers. If you are not concerned then grow different varieties of pumpkins, zucchini, cucumber and zucchini without a worry and enjoy your home grown produce!