Things are very real now. In the space of only one week the female flower opened and was pollinated – no doubt by insects, before I manually pollinated it just in case.
Bees are loving the pumkin flowers. You can stand there and watch bee after bee after bee land and collect pollen. I don’t think there is any doubt that the female flower was naturally pollinated.
Interestingly it does seem to attract a raft of other small insects as well. Hard to tell how they even get inside the flower – if they fly in or crawl in – but there is always something crawling around in there.
There is only one pumpkin (two little ones dropped off before the flower opened) but that one remaining is going great-guns! It is almost doubling size daily, so I put another bag of premium compost on top of the pile and mulched again with pea straw. I’ve been watering it twice daily, once in the morning and once in the evening, and despite some hot weather (a few 30’C+ days) it looks very happy in the full sun, so things are going well.
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- The whole vine
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- Female flower with fruit
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- Female flower from above
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- Female flower shortly after pollination
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- Bee doing it’s duty in a male flower
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- Pumpkin a couple of days after pollination
