Pumpkin Pollination Time; I'm a Pumpkin Grower Again

Since I didn't grow last year, it has been some time since I was a giant pumpkin grower.  Today I had my first pollination.  The female flower showed up at 10 feet on the 747 Johnson plant.   This plant is my "better" looking plant of my two plants and has been a descent grower, so the stars aligned for this pollination.  

The female flower didn't overly orange up yesterday so I wasn't completely sure if it would open today.   I went to check for male flowers to pollinate with and could only fine one male flower that looked like it might open today and could only fine one (fortunately it only takes one) and I wasn't 100% sure it was going to be ready to open.  The male flowers on my 1685 plants aren't overly big.   Some plants I've had in the past have had monster flowers and it was obvious when they were going to open.   So I was a little nervous if I was going to have any pollen available.  Normally I cut the male flower off the evening before and put it is some water to keep the bees from getting at it and to keep it from getting wet from the irrigation, but this time I kept it on the vine and rubber banded it closed.

For the female, I put a little mesh sack over it the evening before and I kept the irrigation off in the morning so it doesn't get wet.   The female did open this morning and the male flower was ready to open so everything worked out.  The female was a four lobe, which is what I prefer and seemed pretty symmetrical. 

After pollinating, I put the mesh bag back on the female and then put a plastic sack over the flower and watered the plant.

This is the earliest pollination I've ever had.  I'd have to check, but I don't think I've ever pollinated before June 15th before, so we are somewhat a head of schedule.   106 days until picking time!

As you can see in the picture, I've got lawn chair over the pumpkin.  That helps keep it dry and cool.  I put the chair over the pumpkin a week before and typically I don't have troubles with pollinations taking, so I think that helps some.

You'll also notice I have sand below the pumpkin. As the pumpkin grows and lays down that gives a soft spot for the pumpkin to grow on and allows the pumpkin to easily slide as it grows.  It also helps drain water away quickly so the pumpkin doesn't rot out.

The 747 Johnson is 1985 Miller x 282 Scherber.   The 1985 Miller has grown a number of giant pumpkins including some monsters over 2,000 pounds.  Unfortunately my 1985 did not, but it was my own fault.  My 1985 plant was a fantastic looking plant, but an irrigation problem that went on for more than a week and wasn't caught nearly killed the plant.  The pumpkin stopped/nearly stopped growing.  I got the problem fixed but the damage was done.   Prior to the problems the pumpkin was cranking.  It never fully recovered by kept growing to be a mis-shapened little thing.   I got it to the scale and to my surprise it went 19% heavy.  Now I wonder what could have been.  That pumpkin was only just verily behind in measurements my personal best pumpkin from two years before and that pumpkin went 18% light.   You never know, but maybe it could have ended up over 1,500 pounds, but you never know.

The 282 Shcerber plant is a selfed clone of the plant that grew the world record 2009 pumpkin.  It is probably the greatest pumpkin ever because it broke the one ton barrier and most all of the top 10 biggest pumpkins that have ever been grown have come from this plant.

The pollinator that I used on the 747 plant this morning is the 1685 Scherber (800 McMullen x 2145 McMullen).  Remember how I said that almost all of the top 10 biggest pumpkins ever grown came from that 2009 pumpkin?    The other two came from the 2145 and that includes the current world record pumpkin.   The 800 McMullen is an under planted seed that is the reverse cross of the 2145 McMullen (AKA same parents).   So genetically the 1685 is very, very similar in its genetic lines to the 2145.  What I like about this cross is that the genetic lines for the 747 and 1685 are very different, so helpfully I'm bringing two great lines together to make something even better.

Pictured here is the 747 plant.  It would be a very nice looking plant, expect for the wind we have here in Midway has been beating it up something terrible.  Silt fences help, but the leaves are getting thrashed.

282 Scherber Pumpkin Pollination

Got this one in, just under the wire.  The latest pollination I've ever had for a competition pumpkin was July 10th.  That was my rookie year.  That pumpkin ended up at 755 pounds.  Finally got a pollination that will hopefully will be a keeper on the 282 Scherber plant.  Unlike the last one, this one has a good shape and four fully formed lobes.

Pollination Time! Busy in the Pumpkin Patch

1985 Miller Flower

This morning we had two females open in the pumpkin patch.  I gave both of the females about a 30% chance of opening this morning, but they both popped open today.  The way you know if a flower is going to open the next day is you see the flower elongate and the petals start oranging up the day before.  Sometimes however, they don't orange up a lot the evening before so you have to be prepared just in case they do open.  That was the case with both of these flowers.

There was a hint of orange yesterday evening, so I went ahead and covered each flower so bees couldn't get at them and then I cut off some male flowers that I put in water and took into the house.  This morning at 6:30 (I'm dedicated even on a holiday) I went out into the patch and both flowers were opening.  I took the petals off the male flowers and then rubbed 3 flowers stamen on the inside of the flower.  If you look closely at the 1985 Miller flower below you'll see it covered with pollen.  After pollination I recovered each flower. 

1985 Miller

I have a yard chair that I put over each female flower about a week before pollination.  That is to help keep it cool.  I'll keep that chair in place until the pumpkin won't fit under it anymore.  I'll also cover the pumpkins, once they have laid down on the ground with a piece of polyester, white cloth.  That will help keep the pumpkin from getting sun burn and also keep a curious bird from pecking at the pumpkin which I've had twice before.

The 1985 Miller pumpkin's name is going to be Ada.  The 282's pumpkin will be named Berkley.  Each named after two of my nieces.  The 1985 Miller was crossed with the 282 Scherber and the 282 Scherber was crossed with the 1985 Miller.  Called a reverse cross.

The 1689 Daletas is a seed that my son is growing.  We crossed the 1689 with the 1985 Miller, which is my best looking plant so far. 

282 Scherber

1689 Daletas

Some Foliar Nutrients for the Pumpkin Plants

Tonight I did a foliar application of Lithovit, humic acid, fulvic acid, multi-mineral and RAW Yucca on the pumpkin plants.  Tomorrow is going to be a hot one so I wanted to get a little Lithovit on the leaves.

The 282 Scherber pumpkin plant has a female on it that will be opening Wednesday morning at about 20 feet out on the main vine.  Never would have thought that my first pollination would be the first week of July, but you have to work with what you get sometimes.

The 1985 Miller I'm guessing will be pollinated on the 4th or 5th at about 16 feet out on the "new" main vine.  I cracked the original main vine when trying to put an S curve in the vine where the female I was going to pollinate was located.  Nearly brought me to tears.  Things with that plant had gone perfectly to that point in the season.  I bent the vine very little.  Maybe 4-5 inches, but the vine was thick and although it was nearly 11:00 it was still kind of cool that morning so it cracked.

My fix was to find a vine about 3 vines back that had a female on the tip.  I terminated all of the vines after that vine and I'll treat this vine like it was the main vine.  The plant won't know the difference but this will definitely set me back on what has been a great plant to this point of the season.

Seems like forever since I had a pumpkin on the vine.  Pulled the plants in August last year so it is coming up on a year.  Excited to finally get something going.

Both plants are good sized right now and growing well.  Buried and terminated a mess of vines today.  Also pulled a ton of weeks in the patch.  You have to get those weeds when they are relatively small or they will cause you big headaches later.

Pumpkin Pollination & Genetics

I received a request to write about how to choose what plants to cross and how to develop genetics in your seeds that could potentially grow a world record pumpkin the following season.  I should start by clearing a commonly misunderstood part of pollination.  That is that the pollination you do in the next few weeks will have no effect genetically this season on your pumpkin.  Some think that by pollinating with a particular plant this season might effect how the pumpkin grows this season.  That isn't the case.  The pumpkin isn't the child in the pollination.  It is the seeds in the pumpkin that are the children, so the pollination you do this year will only effect next year's pumpkins.

First, lets talk about how to properly pollinate your female flower so you can keep the genetics pure.  Nature has wonderful pollinators that can do a great job of pollination for you.  Bees and other insects will find open flowers in an instant and most of the time a female flower will get pollinated with little help from us.  However, bees will pollinate with the pollen they have come in contact with and in some cases it won't be the pollen you want.

An Atlantic Giant pumpkin is a Cucurbita Maxima variety but so is a banana squash, so letting the bees do the pollination means that your pumpkin plant the following season, from the seeds this season, might give you a surprise if you don't control the pollination.

What I do to control the pollinations is to cover my female flowers with a little mesh bag the evening  before they open.  You can tell when they are going to open because the flower peddles become more orange and the flower tends to elongate some the day before.  The evening before I find some male flowers (ideally 3-4 but one will work) that I cut off and put in water.  The next morning, around 7:00am I'll take those male flowers and hand pollinate the female flower.  I then cover that female flower with the same mesh bag to make sure bees don't get into the flower over the next hour.  Doing it this way I ensure that both the male flowers and female flowers only have the pollen in them that I want them to have.

Choosing which plants to cross can best be summed up in a Forest Gumps quote, "Life is like a box of chocolates.  You never know what you are going to get inside."  Genetics are a funny thing.  Just like in real life, you sometimes have those those short round parents who produce a gorgeous, tall and skinny daughter.  There are world record pumpkins who have produced very small progeny (I think of the 1385 Daletas as an example).   Sometimes the best planned crosses just don't work out.

What I look at when making crosses is the pedigree of both plants.  If you go to tools.pumpkinfantic.com you can search most any seed and look up who mama and papa was for generations.  Typically when doing crosses you either want to bring in a pollinator that is very similar or very different.  So finding a pollinator with the same mama and papa or something that has very little heritage that is the same seems to work out best.

Next I like to look at the shape and ribbing of both parent's pumpkins.  Ideally you don't want a pumpkin that is very ribby.  Ribs can cause splits in your pumpkin because when a deep rib intersects a crack on the inside of the pumpkin, you then have a hole and your season is done at that point.

Next, I like to take a look at the vigor and characteristics of my plants.  If I have a plant that isn't an overly aggressive grower than crossing it with something that seems to be more aggressive might be a good idea.  If I have a plant with big leaves I may not want to cross it with a plant that also has overly big leaves because I found that really big leaves tend not to be as good a shape at the end of the season as wind blows them over.

Lastly, I look at similar crosses that other people have made and see how they tend to work out.  You would think that a 1725 Harp and a 1161 Rodonis, which have both produced world record pumpkins, would be a great cross but in the research I did on other crosses found no great progeny.  This doesn't mean that it couldn't work, but those genetics didn't seem to mesh as well as you would have thought.

Most of the recent world record pumpkins have come from the 2009 Wallace seed.  You look at it's pedigree and you see a cross of two plants that have very little parentage in common.  Obviously that worked.  You then look at the 1725 Harp seed that produced the 2009 pumpkin and it was a selfed pumpkin.  That means the male flowers that pollinated it came from the same plant.   That cross obviously worked as well.

More growers should probably self pollinate their plants.  That practice was kind of frowned upon just 5 years ago until the 1725 Harp started busting out really big and one ton pumpkins.  Selfing can homogenize pumpkin traits and enhance them.  So if you have an exceptional pumpkin plant that produces a really big pumpkin than the seeds from that selfed pumpkin could have some seeds that aren't as good as the parent genetically but it could have seeds that have some of the same traits that have been enhanced.  If enough seeds are grown from that selfed pumpkin that are then selfed the same should happen in the next generation were you can get some super seeds that take the genetics to the next level up.  Problem with pumpkin growing is that you need a lot of growers to grow your seeds in order for that to happen properly, but that is how the seed companies do it to lock in traits and get desirable genetic lines.

This season my plan is to pollinate my 1985 Miller plant with my 282 Scherber plant.  This is one of those crosses where I am bringing in similar genetic lines into that cross.  Haven't decided what I'm going to cross the 282 yet, but I'll be deciding that at the end of this week.

A word of warning.  Many times the best laid pollination plans don't work out.  Lots of times I've planned on pollinating with a particular plant and there were just no male flowers on it that were ready on the day of pollination.   Sometimes you pollinate, get a perfect pumpkin and then there are no seeds or the seeds aren't viable in the pumpkin.  When my big 1421 pumpkin went down I did a couple of late pollination on that plant using pollen from the clone of the 1725 Harp plant that produced the world record 2009 pumpkin.  I would have grown that seed in a second.  It was an ideal cross.  After a semi-early frost I opened up the pumpkins and there was lots of seeds but the seeds weren't mature so none of the seeds would grow.

Happy pollinating to everyone!  Things get exciting in the pumpkin patch this time of year.  Hopefully, in about 30 days from now we will all be talking about how our pumpkins are putting on 35-40 pounds a day.

If you have something you would like for me to write about feel free to post a comment and I would be happy to write about the subject or reply to you comment in the comment fields below.

First Female in the Pumpkin Zone

Somewhere between 10-14 feet is typically the sweet spot to set your pumpkin on the main vine.  I have a female that has shown up at about 13 feet.  I'll pollinate it, but I'm inclined to wait for a female to show up on the main that is a little farther out so I can get the plant and root structure larger before the pumpkin starts taking off.  However, you should pollinate everything because you never know which pollination will take and which pollinations end up growing well.

The 335 Scherber and Some Foliar for the Elbert

Tomorrow I'm going to pollinate a second pumpkin on my son's 335 Scherber plant.  That pumpkin is the product of a clone of the plant that grew a 1775 pound pumpkin crossed with a plant that grew a 1663 pound pumpkin.  Tomorrow I'll be pollinating it with a clone of world record 2009 pound pumpkin.  On paper it is a very impressive cross.

My sons plant is very impressive for the space it has and the quality of the soil it is growing in.  My son's personal best pumpkin was about 230 pounds and he is already over 150 pounds with two months of growing left to go.

This evening I gave a foliar application of 0-1-1 with some liquid seaweed in it to the 1775 plant.  Also sprayed the vines after the fruit on the 1421 plant.  The 1775 is still moderatley slow growing so I'm hoping this will give it a little umph.

1775 Flower Pollinated; Lastest Pictures from the Pumpkin Patch

Today is maybe the first time that I've ever pollinated a pumpkin and it was forecasted to be in the 80s.  Not only that, but it is forecasted to be in the 80s for the better part of this week with even some 70s in the forecast.  Normally I'm scrambling to freeze buckets of water and putting solar blankets over the pumpkins to keep them cool.  I'm not sure I know how to pollinate in the 80s.

Pictured below is the 1775 female that I pollinated this morning.  A nice 4 lober.  The flower on this one was huge. 

If both of my pollination were to take and I were to take the 1421 to Jared's Nursery Weigh Off it would have 95 days to grow which is close to perfect amount of time.  Too little time and you lose potential weight gains on the pumpkin.  Too much time and you risk the pumpkin rotting out.  If I were to take the 1775 pumpkin to Nick's Nursery Weigh Off it would have 96 days to grow.

These are the latest pictures of the pumpkin plants.  By the end of next week the main vine on the 1421 Stelts will be close to the length of the main vine of the 1451 Scherber last year at the end of the season.  I wouldn't call the 1421 an aggressive grower, but it is a very good grower.The 1421 probably has 5-6 side vines that are terminated now because they have reached the end of their growing area.

1421 Stelts

1775 Starr

Gave the plants some foliar magnesium and manganese.

A Big Thanks to Joe for the World Record Pollen

World Record Pollen

I've been praying for this.  Last fall Matt DeBacco took some cuttings from the plant that grew the world record 2,009 pound pumpkin vines and then got them to root and keep those cuttings going during the winter in a greenhouse.  I pollinated my 1421 Stelts from a cross of one of those cuttings and a seed from the 2009 pumpkin.  Rocky Mountain Giant Vegetable Grower club member and friend Joe got one of those clone plants this spring.  It was 90% dead when it arrived in the mail.  Obviously had gotten too hot during shipping but Joe was able to get it going again but it was stunted.  Because of that I didn't think there would be any pollen available for me.

1775 Pumpkin

I got lucky.  My 1775 Starr looked like it was going to open today but it didn't and a flower from the world record plant showed up ready to open tomorrow.  I know Joe probably had one of his own plants ready to be pollinated with the flower but he gave it to me.  So a big thanks to him!

One of the great things about crossing with a clone is that you know the traits of the plant and how big of a pumpkin it can grow.  Many a grower has lamented which of their plants they crossed with each other because sometimes you have a plant that grew a massive pumpkin that you crossed with a dude of a plant.  Crossing with a clone takes the guessing out of your crosses.

World Record Pumpkin

The 1775 Starr pumpkin was a massive and wide pumpkin, but not quite as tall.  The world record pumpkin was very tall.  Both pumpkins were the exact same size however having an amazing over the top measurement of 458 inches which ties them being the 2nd largest measurement for pumpkins ever.  The 1775 went very light so that is why it didn't end up as a world record.  Both pumpkins were grown from the 1725 Harp seed.

First, I'm hoping that this pollination takes.  Second I'm hoping I can grow a big pumpkin on the 1775.  Third I'm hoping that from this cross I can get the genes for the height of the 2009 and the width of the 1775 to get a very special pumpkin.

Yesterday I noticed some green algae on the soil.  With three days of 95+ degrees I nearly doubled the water so the soil has been wet.  This  evening I gave both of the pumpkin plants some BiotaMax, Actinovate and Azos to help kill any bad stuff that might be trying to grow in the soil.

Hot in Denver and Pumpkin Pollinations

The 1421 Stelts seems to have taken the pollination in what has been some pretty bad heat. The female has grown in size so that is a good sign.  One more 95 degree day and then we will back into the 80s for a while. Usually days 3-5 is when you can really tell if the pumpkin has set and not until about day 10 can you breath a sigh of relief. Pictured below is the 1775 Starr female that I'll be pollinating on Saturday or Sunday. This female is similar to the one that grew into the 1,775 pound pumpkin that the seed I am growing came from.  However, Thad's a fair amount skinner and had a much longer stem on it.

This evening I sprayed some bug spray on all of the plants.  I kind of hate to do that but after losing a plant last year to a disease spread by the Squash Bug I don't want to lose a plant again because of that.  I also sprayed a little fish & seaweed on the ground where the plants haven't grown yet.

Female Flower on the 1775 at 12 feet Out on the Main

A female flower showed up today on the 1775 Starr plant.  That means that both plants now have females in ideal locations.  I now just have to hope that the pollination will take on each plant and then we will be off on the races.  I won't give either plant any nitrogen over the next two weeks to help make sure that the pollination will take.  I will give the plants some seaweed, magnesium and calcium over that two week period however.

This evening I gave the plants a drench of 1/2 tablespoon seaweed with one tablespoon of Azos.  Most of it was put around the stump and along the main vine.