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Post by richardw on Nov 12, 2012 15:15:17 GMT -5
Another grower for Koanga sent me the below email but having no experience with hand pollinating myself can someone please advice how this is done
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Post by cortona on Nov 12, 2012 15:24:39 GMT -5
richard yes the competiton pumpkins are of the same specie as your friend's pumpkins(i've grow it wit some result in past years)so he have to hand pollinate it!
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Post by templeton on Nov 12, 2012 16:01:57 GMT -5
You have to get up early, check for flowers that are about to open, tape them closed, to exclude pollen getting into the female flowers, and to stop insects carrying foreign pollen into the male flowers, which you might then transfer into your females. When the flowers are more mature, - i think it takes a day or so, pick the male flowers, carry them to the female, peel off tape, transfer pollen to the female bits, then tape the female flower closed again so sneaky pollen can't get in. Wait for fruit to develop.
I'm sure there is a youtube vid somewhere.
An alternative idea is to approach the kids, and get them to do the work on their pumpkins. If they really want to win the comp, then they need to get the fruit growing early, and minimize the number of fruits per vine. So hand fertilize early fruit for them, and if they are really diligent they should then remove all the subsequent flowers, so the plant puts all its energy into one fruit. Might be less work to manage their flowers than yours. T
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Post by oxbowfarm on Nov 12, 2012 16:35:58 GMT -5
I have to disagree with templeton a bit. For hand pollinating squash you need to go out the evening BEFORE the flowers open and tape them. They are usually pretty easy to find because they are typically pretty orange and the tips will be partially opening. This can vary from variety to variety and the flowers are all slightly different between the squash species.
You tape them shut with masking tape or some other type of tape. Some folks feel that masking tape isn't strong enough and use fiberglass reinforced packing tape. I've had great luck with masking tape. After you tape your male and female flowers you should flag them with something so you can find them in the morning.
Next morning go out mid-morning or so and find your male flowers and remove the entire petal area from each one. Then tear off the taped end of the female flower and polinate the stigma with the pollen covered anther of the male flower using the entire flower like a brush. Then tape the female flower back up and mark it somehow.
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Post by Joseph Lofthouse on Nov 12, 2012 17:04:17 GMT -5
If you are not saving seed, then it doesn't matter what the neighbors are growing.
If you don't care about varietal purity, then it doesn't matter what the neighbors are growing. I don't care about purity.
Being a pragmatist, I figure that squash patches that are growing 100 feet apart are essentially isolated. (My cross pollination rate was less than 3% for squash I grew last year that were about that far apart in two directions.) It's easier for me to weed out off-type plants than it is to do hand pollinations.
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Post by templeton on Nov 12, 2012 18:48:10 GMT -5
Yep, go with Oxbow. T
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Post by richardw on Nov 12, 2012 23:43:18 GMT -5
Thanks guys,that should help him a lot.
We are saving these for seed Joseph so purity is important,i grow the Green Chestnut pumpkin year in year out,i dont have to worry about cross pollination as i'm surrounded by pig and dairy farms so there's no one within a bulls roar who grows pumpkins little own a garden,...which is quite handy really. ;D
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hammynz
gopher
Grow Old Disgracefully!!
Posts: 6
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Post by hammynz on Nov 14, 2012 4:04:55 GMT -5
Hi guys, I'm the person referred to by Richard Watson re to my problem with the next door kids pumpkins. I have now joined this forum. Thanks for your responses which are very helpful. I think I'll go with managing the kids' pumpkins as they have only four plants and will be growing only one pumpkin per plant. That will be very much easier than hand pollinating a large number of flowers from my 12 plants!! Templeton, thanks so much for your specific recommendation on this.
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Post by Joseph Lofthouse on Nov 14, 2012 9:26:27 GMT -5
I think I'll go with managing the kids' pumpkins as they have only four plants and will be growing only one pumpkin per plant. That will be very much easier than hand pollinating a large number of flowers from my 12 plants!! I did this last summer as a means of making a cross between two pepo cultivars. It worked great. Gotta keep up with plucking blossoms. I plucked every male blossom I could find no matter how small on the mother plant. Every other day was sufficient as long as I was thorough, but three days between pluckings was too long. I missed three to four blossoms during the fruiting period, but at any given time there might have been a thousand blossoms on the intended pollen donor, so I figure that statistically that's good enough for my purposes.
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floricole
gardener
39 acres, half wooded half arable, land of alluvial
Posts: 108
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Post by floricole on Nov 14, 2012 9:56:16 GMT -5
I just look for the female flower when I find one I put a stick near it. this way you can look to this flower every day. when you think that it's ready to bloom just tie it. and tie couple of male flower that are ready. (I put a red flag on the stick to tell me where I have ready flower, no time to search for them every morning) the next morning if the flower is open then you pollinate it with a male open flower. (I change the flag color to green, tell me that it have been pollinate. look back few day later to see if it's set good
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Post by wolfcub on Nov 14, 2012 10:34:39 GMT -5
Very nice pictures pierre, Thanks for posting them, good idea with the coloured flags..
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Post by canadamike on Nov 14, 2012 17:05:21 GMT -5
Growing giant pumpkins can be done 2 way: if you are going to buy seeds all the time from respected growers, do not even bother self pollinating, it has NO effect...the fruits are the ovaries, you do not care about the babies, they could be pollinated by a miniature maxima and it would not show.
If you want to self pollinate to buid up your own strain, buy seeds from winners, there is a trade market for them on the net, they are very expensive but worth it.
Then hand pollinate, but NOT only by taping the female, also tape the male about to open...this male flower can be visited by bees too, albeit in a different part of the day.
And if you really want a HUGE pumpkin, you need about 2 tons of manure and compost per plant, about one ton in a pile, the rest spread around so the nodes of the maximas will grow in a rich medium and root at the internodes in rich soil.
You let 2 pumknins grow a bit, select the largest one, then kill the undesired one and ALL the other flowers showing up.
You water VERY regularly and you foliar feed every few days with seaweed and fish emulsion, or a mix already made like Neptune's Harvest, the most commonly used, and also NOW, with a CO2 fertilizer, like Lithovit.
LIthovit is responsible for the explosion in weight of the giant pumkins records in the last years.
NO record in the world now is without it. What it does is introduce by foliar feeding an unstable molecule of calcium carbonate that is ready to give without much energy needed from the plant some carbon in the system. It is like the result of photosynthesis without photosynthesis, so it works all day long, and photosynthesis still happens.
So when it is cold and rainy and dark in the sky, the plant still makes chemical reactions with the same result: more carbon in it: bigger and greener leaves. LIke if it was warm, breesy and sunny.
YOu, of course, still get whatever warmth and sun there is...just something more.
It is the reason my friend ended up with the canadian record, 1678 pounds, ON ITS FIRST YEAR of doing it. He also was the canadian champ for the biggest tomato, 6 and something pounds, in Peterborough Ontario, not exactly your dreamy giant vegetable place.
No wins without CONSTANT foliar feeding, either in Canada, Europe, USA, Australia or else.
Most have their lil'something else added, secret things like beer or diluted milk ( I prefer the latter) but this is the basis of the stuff.
One thing I told JIm to add in the recipe is 4-5 shovels of alfalfa meal, in Canada, they plant them very late in order to have them at their maximum potential in October, when the measurements are made.
Here, you can get frost before that, and it kills all the leaves despite the fruit being OK. ALfalfa contains triacontanol, a growth hormone that is also a fatty alcool. It has protected my crops for almost 30 years from light frosts, since alcool has a lower freezing point.
And it is also a growth hormone...
Good luck
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hammynz
gopher
Grow Old Disgracefully!!
Posts: 6
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Post by hammynz on Nov 14, 2012 17:24:14 GMT -5
Well folks I have to say that I am mightily impressed with the volume and content of advice I am getting re my pumpkin issue. As a new member of this forum, I'm hooked already!! You are a very nice group of people, so thanks all!!
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Post by templeton on Nov 14, 2012 19:31:22 GMT -5
Rob, there are a lot of seeds in a pumpkin - are you growing 12 plants for a bit of genetic diversity or do you need that much seed? Reason is, if you only need seed quantity from a few pumpkins, the flower patrol only need occur until you have sufficient fruit set, mark those fruit (the scarring method lil minnie posted about might be useful), then just let everything do whatever, just don't collect seed from the later fruits. T
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hammynz
gopher
Grow Old Disgracefully!!
Posts: 6
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Post by hammynz on Nov 16, 2012 15:47:26 GMT -5
Well T, here is the update re my 'Blue Hubbard' pumpkin growing exercise. The reason for 12 plants is that the Koanga Institute need lots of seed to be available for members throughout NZ who may wish to purchase it. However.......the CEO of Koanga has just advised me that they will not be accepting the seed this season due to the perceived danger of crossing with pumpkins that may be grown by any of my numerous neighbours, particularly the kids immediately next door. So, I'll continue growing the strongest plants and give the truck load of produce to neighbours, family and friends. It looks like my future growing activity for Koanga will be limited to lines that are not subject to crossing, a shame really but I can't control what my neighbours are doing!!
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