A Helping Hand…..

Good day to you, my gardening friends. Due to possible fluctuating temperatures or some other sort of complication, my squash plants are finally producing female flowers. Wahooooooo! I feared fresh home grown squash was not going to be a part of my garden repertoire this year. So, I have decided to give the plants a bit of help with reproduction.

I have intervened with pollination by hand on several occasions in the past, mainly due to a lack of bee presence. My neighbors are not gardeners, so the only flowering plants are in my tiny yard. I utilize every means to entice them to my garden (trust me).  But every now and then, I have help out.

It really is quite simple. You carefully remove the petals from the male squash flower and this will expose the pollen anther (the male flowers have a regular stem and are located at the top of the plants) and gently rub the anther around the the stigma several times, located inside of the female blossom (the female flowers have a tiny squash attached and are located at the bottom of the plants).

I generally have a huge success rate with this method with my squash and other members of the Cucurbit family ,such as pumpkins, watermelons, cantaloupe and cucumbers.

I truly hope this works for my plants this year!