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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.

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

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

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

Quote from: vegmandan on June 28, 2008, 21:33:25
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 :)

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

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

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

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