From

Location

Message

Date Posted

Scituate, MA

Hi. Male flower stamen are not present. Can't pollinate. Any ideas? Thanks

7/20/2015 1:54:11 PM

Honesdale, Pennsylvania

May be sterile... seems like a lot of that going around this year.

7/20/2015 3:26:15 PM

Germany

Yep, I´ve got two out of six plants sterile this year :-(

7/20/2015 4:47:49 PM

Torrance, Ca.

Pumpking, man that sucks :(

7/20/2015 6:39:10 PM

Central NY

Wouldn't you be able to use good males from a different plant?.. Or does that mean the whole plant is sterile?... Cuz that really would suck

7/20/2015 7:31:45 PM

Germany

Here´s more discussion of sterile plants:

http://www.bigpumpkins.com/msgboard/ViewThread.asp?b=3&p=544035

Yesterday I´ve pulled the 822 Bond (my 150 sqft contest plant), it was an excellent plant (good grower, flexible vines, and I´ve never had a fruit before which was taking off so fast), but fruit growth slowed down around day 15 and it stopped growing at the age of 20 days and a weight of about 50 lbs. All the males on this plant were empty and it was the plant which suffered most from sunscald. Have been running out of room, no room left for further experimenting with additional pollinations.

The other sterile plant is 350-400 sqft, has aborted the two pollinations on the main vine after they had grown to about 6" length. There´s still some room left for the vines of this plant, now I let the bees pollinate various females on main and secondary vines and I´ll wait for another two weeks and see if one or two of the pumpkins actually want to grow.
Features of the other sterile plant: Empty males (of course), delayed development of males (the first males opened about 2-3 weeks later than on the other plants of the same age), excellent grower, one of the first plants which got sunscald.

Although I love plants for direct comparison (having two plants back to back in the same spot and see how they are doing in the same soil etc.) I´m not so happy about the chance of making the direct comparison of two sterile plants in my patch this year.

BTW: Each of the sterile plants has a fertile plant in its back on the same mound. Hence, it must have been the genetics, not the soil in this particular part of the patch.

7/21/2015 2:40:34 AM

Mission Viejo, CA

We had a sterile plant in our patch this year. No stamen on the few males that actually formed stems; most didn't. We did have what appeared to be normal looking females. We cross pollinated from a normal plant. The pumpkins did appear to be growing, however I was told by the grower to anticipate that the females would abort when approaching beach ball size.

7/23/2015 12:07:45 AM