I went up to the pumpkin patch about 7 a.m. this morning to see if I could find a few more female flowers earlier in the morning. The patch was a beautiful sight......loads of male flowers standing up over the tops of the pumpkin leaves, as if shouting "Look at me"......."No, look at ME".......boisterous, big, beautiful flowers....thick in the patch kind of like Navy Seamen on weekend leave on shore. On closer inspection, down under the leaves a little, I'd find the occasional female flower.....equally beautiful, but already heavy with fruit, keeping low to the ground. I decided to help out a little with the pollination process and plucked a male flower, stripped him down to his pollen-laden stamen, and then found a female flower and rubbed the pollen all over her stigma. It's kind of personal when you think about it, but it's what pumpkin growers have been doing for centuries. I noticed that there was only one female flower for every 2-3 pumpkin plants. This was not exactly calming my pumpkin anxiety. I worked on this project for a while, noting that indeed there were bees, ants, and spiders trying to help the process along a little. One honey bee in particular was so full of pollen, over his entire body, that when he attempted to fly up out of the flower, he sounded like a small aircraft engine which was cutting out......bzzzz.....ump......bzzzzz.....ump, and then finally got up to an adequate elevation and took off in a horizontal flight pattern straight for the bee hive which was sitting maybe 50 yards away.
Contemplating the future of my pumpkins, I decided to go visit the round garden for a while and feed some tomato horn worms to the guineas. This is a pretty entertaining morning activity as one guinea always lays claim to the worm when I throw it into the middle of the flock, pecks it a couple times, then runs like a banshee to keep the others from getting it. I'm honestly not sure if I'm successfully killing a tomato horn worm or just ensuring that it gets dropped elsewhere in the garden, simply to go on munching and frassing. After ridding my tomatoes of a couple horn worms, then tying up some tomato plants a little tighter to the fence, I decide to head out of the gardens.
On my way by the pumpkin patch (maybe an hour later) I can't help but stop in and look again for female flowers. I immediately spot a few and have to pluck a couple male flowers to do a little pollinating. I realize that possibly female pumpkin flowers are similar to human females in that all of them don't rise at the same time in the morning. I see several flowers which have already opened and shut, several more which look like they may yet open today sometime, and many adolescent flowers which will be opening in a day or two. I am somewhat encouraged by all of this and reminded that God probably has a great plan for the pumpkin patch and doesn't really need me to help out much. Imagine that!
Michelle Grosek
Bear Butte Gardens
Michelle@BearButteGardens.com
http://www.bearbuttegardens.com/
