Organic Garden: Female Squash and Male Squash (Who Knew?)
Today marks our third rain in a week. It is doing wonders for my garden! The squash plants have really taken off.
For two weeks I have had tons of yellow flowers on my squash plants. I started to worry because none of them were turning into fruit. Well, vegetables.
So, I started to Google.
There are male flowers and female flowers in squash plants.
The male flowers look like this (minus the black bug):
This particular one is closed up, but you get the idea.
The inside of a male flower has one single piece that is covered in pollen
The female flowers actually have the vegetable attached to them. Miniature version.
If a bee transfers pollen from the male flower to a female flower, the fruit will grow. If not, the vegetable will die.
Yesterday when I went out to check my garden (day 69) there was one baby squash attached to a female flower.
I jumped for joy!
Today, the female flower was open.
So I pollinated it by hand….. because I want to be sure this squash grows!
Don’t worry, I Googled it. I can officially hand pollinate.
This is what the inside of the female flower looks like. Three little circles that remind me of “eggs”.
So far I only have two female flowers. I have read that your plants will have far more males than females in the beginning.
Such is nature.
Now, we just wait.
Wait for more female flowers and wait to see if my hand pollination worked.
My zucchini are going mad too; I’m pretty sure that they are being pollinated by ants!
Margot- as you can see I have ants too. : )
You’ve brought up a good point that if the bees do not do it the ants will….
Oh this was a huge help to understand my miracle pumpkins that have “appeared” without me planting a seed for the past two years. Can you briefly describe how you pollinate them by hand? (that sounds do dirty!) Cant wait to inspect my flowers tomorrow!!
Tammy- it is super easy; I actually found a video online.
You either take a q-tip and rub it on the pollen that is on the male flower “part” and then take that q-tip and rub the pollen on the inside of the female flower “part”.
Or, (this is what I did) tear the male flower off and pull of the petals (some people cook them and eat them) and dab it over and over again on the inside female flower making sure the pollen is touching the female “parts”.
I know that sounds weird, but that is what you do. I am sure there is a more graceful way to describe it…. but that is the best I can do. 🙂
Or, Google hand pollinating squash and it will pull up a couple of videos.
Awesome! Tomorrow I’ll go play plant reproductive specialist and see if I can get my flowers to get their groove on!!
I just had a conversation about this with a friend of mine the other day. She said gourds and squashes frequently didn’t get pollinated, so she almost always hand pollinates. Especially the fall squashes. Some are nightshades too, meaning they bloom better at night and depend on moths to pollinate, but if they are in a darker part of your yard, the moths might not get to them.
Good info to know, Laura. Thanks for sharing!
So I checked my flowers today and since my plant is still relatively small, it’s just started blooming. Every flower, right now, is a “boy”. No “girls” yet. But since I know what to look for, I’ll check them every day.
I feel like an infertility specialist…. LoL
Tammy- I had two weeks of male flowers only before any female flowers appeared.