First female pumpkin flower in container garden

Tuesday, 05th Feb 2013 was a nice surprise.  As though in consideration of the lament about all male flowers in the pumpkin plant on the roof top container garden, the first female pumpkin flower had bloomed.

Now, in case you didn’t know, pumpkin flowers are a bit touchy.  They have to be pollinated not only on the day of their opening/blooming, but also within a few hours.  In this case, the flower had bloomed on Tuesday morning.

So the flower, if it had to bear fruit should have been pollinated well before the time I had spotted it.  Usual advice to the growers is to pollinate by hand between 6 AM to 10 AM on the day of flowering, when there aren’t enough bees around.

Thankfully, the bees which had been busy buzzing the male flowers earlier were up to the task.  The flower sure did look like a properly pollinated one.  As it was too late on Tuesday for a snap, here is the one of Wednesday morning.



Here we can clearly spot the difference between the male flower and a female flower of the pumpkin plant.  The male flower doesn’t have the tell-tale bulge or ovary below the petals.

Okay!  That’s enough botany lesson for the day.
:-D

BTW, just another point.  If the pollination is inadequate, pumpkins are known to abort before full development.  Yikes! Fingers crossed!

---