These were my pumpkins on the 1st July. I had seven out, and two held in reserve in the greenhouse. This was a wise decision on my part, I thought, as I had lost two of my plants to slugs despite my best efforts, so I was able to replace them. At the same time, it was probably not such a good idea because those last two plants have spent all of July trying to catch up with the others.
What was also unwise was planting all these pumpkin plants so close together, but I have a very small garden, and the plan is to get a pollination (or two) and then cull the others. And the courgettes went in the patch as they weren’t doing very well in the greenhouse, plus I was worried about the insects not reaching them to pollinate. I planned to trail the plant up, instead of leaving it all on the ground.
One week on (8th July)… and you can see the growth and the first flower opening (a male, of course).
I later learned that the males arrive first to attract pollinators. Unfortunately, everything that attracted bees to my garden had finished flowering and gone on to fruit, so I had a distinct lack of bees. And, as you can see from that plastic, my little tunnel didn’t last long, but the hoops will come in handy, I’m sure.
I wasn’t fazed, though. I was thrilled the plants were growing, and much more quickly now, and certain Mother Nature would prove my eight-plant theory right.
On the 12th of July, I got my first female flower. My excitement was quickly dashed when I realised that I didn’t have a single male flower open. So, possible pumpkin #1 was a fail (as was proven a couple of weeks later when the little ball fell off the plant to the ground).
But the next day, the 13th of July, in an incredible display of incompetent timing, three male flowers opened. It was too late by then, though. The female flower had closed her petals, and that was that.
I wasn’t expecting a successful pollination straight away. If anything, I was just happy to see evidence that my eight-plant theory might work, as the three male flowers were each on a different plant.
On the 19th of July, a second female flower opened; only this time, there were two open male flowers. It was the first synchronisation, and I remained hopeful that the insects or a passing bee would pollinate it.
On 21st of July, upon the opening of another female, and after watching some videos, I decided to try my hand at hand-pollinating. I had read that I needed to have a pollination before the end of July to get a decent-sized pumpkin for Halloween. There were male flowers open, so I hand-pollinated it… only to realise later in the day that the female flower belonged to the courgette plant I’d tucked into the front row.
On 24th July another female flower opened, which I hand-pollinated with one male flower, and on the 25th, pumpkin #5 opened up. I used two males to pollinate this one and also closed the petals and tied them shut until the next day.
By now, the pumpkin patch had taken off…
…and it was getting harder to keep track, so my focus turned to the possible pumpkins (pollinations),
On 28th July, there were signs that #5 had pollinated successfully, and I whipped out my tape measure… and so began my obsession with measuring pumpkins…
#5