Topic: Butternut Pollination

[realfood]

My first butternut female flower  is open, but no sign of any of the many male butternut buds opening. In desperation, I have used one of the open Winter Squash male flowers to pollinate the Butternut. It will be interesting to see what happens! I hope that there is a chance of pollination even though Winter Squash and Butternuts are derived from different species of squash.

[Chilipepper]

I have a Dumb ?
BUT How can you tell male from female flowers?

[theothermarg]

I,v never grown any squash before here is my butternut. it,s been like this for ages, does it look normal? should I be doing anything to it?

marg

[vegmandan]

The female flowers have a small fruit behind them and the males are just on a long stalk with no fruit. ;)

[Chilipepper]

The female flowers have a small fruit behind them and the males are just on a long stalk with no fruit. ;)

thankyou i never knew that as you can gather :)

[tricia]

I did the same thing only today. Some self-sown squashes have huge female flowers but not enough pollen on males for them all so I pollinated them with flowers from any male flowers I saw open!. They all seem to cross pollinate for this seasons fruit okay, but the seeds from the fruit are not worth keeping as they will not come true.

Tricia

[saddad]

I agree, all squash will cross pollinate with other squash. Fine if you don't have a male and female open from the same variety at the same time, useless if you were hoping to save seeds...  ;D

[tonybloke]

The fruit will be true to type of the mother plant, but the seed will be variable.

[Crystalmoon]

Hi everyone is it totally necessary to aid the pollination process or does anyone have success with squash just leaving it to nature?
Thanks