Giant Pumpkins NZ - Pollination
Pollination
If everything is going correctly your giant pumpkin plant will be growing in no time.
Once the flowers start appearing on the plant, you have two options will pollinating, you either leave it up the bees to do it for you, or you do it yourself.
The advantage of doing it yourself is that you could have your plant pollinated long before the bees get around to doing it. This is important when you are trying to grow a very large pumpkin, the earlier it is set, the longer it has to grow, letting it put more weight on.
How to hand pollinate
First you need to know the difference between the male and female flower. It's pretty easy, the female flower will have a small pumpkin at its base, the male flower does not.
Male flower Female Flower
The best time to do hand pollinating is in the morning around 9am. If you do it later then this, the bees may have already beaten you to it, and there will no pollen around.
Find a newly opened male flower and pick it, removing all the outer flower petals to expose the stamen and fresh pollen. Gently swab the stigma in the female plants with this. This should pollinate the female flowers.
Male Flower Removed petals
Pollinating female flower
