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Minneapolis

How do i hand pollinate my pumpkin plant? It is growing fruit, but the fruit dries up and dies at the size of a golf ball.

8/15/2008 2:52:22 PM

Colorado Springs, CO

Do you have a second plant for potential cross-pollination ? Do you have other appropriate plants/flowers near the patch to bring bees and natural pollinators to your pumpkin flowers ?

This golf-ball size fruit you see IS the start of one....and is a female flower on your plant. You should be noting a closed petal end becoming more yellow in preceeding days.....and then early one morning it is open in all its glory. That is when you may have to play the surrogate role and prepare several available male flowers and do the deed for her.

You can do. We're not talking about cattle here. Probe and rub the male parts' pollen in and around those inviting lobes. Then, stand back and have a cigarette.

8/15/2008 3:27:13 PM

Garden State Pumpkins

Let the bees do it....don't water in the morning...don't do anything in the morning....if the plant still doesn't pollinate start thinking something is wrong....I had fusaria and Alternaria and the symptoms were similar...just never pollinated...golf ball size sounds like they're getting wet during the critical times.

8/15/2008 7:43:30 PM