27.11.10

Butternut Cross Pollination?

I mentioned a post ago that the butternuts had only produced female flowers. Since then some males have opened and i've hand pollinated some of the females. The wierd thing is a few of the fruit that I expected to drop off are still there and growing nicely. I've done a bit of research and it seems that butternuts, zucchini's and Goldn Nuggets are part of the same species of curcurbits and will cross pollinate. As usual there's a bit contradictory info on the web but most seem to agree that this can happen. Apparently the fruit wont be affected in the first year but will probably produce mutants from any seed saved.

The two together shown below are about 100mm long and the bigger single is about 150mm long. They would have dropped off by now if they hadn't been pollinated by something. Unless I missed a male flower, but I don't think so, pumpkin flowers are pretty hard to miss.



No comments:

Post a Comment