Cucurbits - Cross Pollination and Best Practices

[dragonfly7]

We are gardening in an approximately 5000 sqft backyard. Zucchini and yellow summer squash separated by cucumber in one bed adjacent to a three-sisters garden growing melons. As luck would have it, late-seeded pumpkin has provided ample plants for a pumpkin patch. The question now is where to put it?

My thinking is on the opposite side of the three-sisters/melon bed from the summer squashes. This would put it approx. 20ft away from the summer squash bed. We have no interest in seed saving in this season, so that is not the concern. The question is: will we still get "pumkinis"?

I know the melons (supposedly) will not cross with the squashes, but my research tells me that the pumpkins and summer squash can cross. I haven't put the pumpkins in the ground yet. Any ideas/suggestions on this whole cucurbit cross pollination issue?

[remy]

If you are not saving seeds, you need not worry about a thing except tending the plants
The cross pollination happens with the seeds, not this year's fruits. The pollination of squash never affect this year's fruit. Sometimes people plant a wonky seed, and then think it is from the current year, but it really isn't. The seed got that way before it ever made it into the garden.
If you save the seed and plant those seed next year and if your pumpkin is C. pepo (there are a few "pumpkins that are other species of cucurbita) like the summer squashes are, you will have mutant babies.
Remy

[2manband]

Originally Posted by remy

If you are not saving seeds, you need not worry about a thing except tending the plants
The cross pollination happens with the seeds, not this year's fruits. The pollination of squash never affect this year's fruit. Sometimes people plant a wonky seed, and then think it is from the current year, but it really isn't. The seed got that way before it ever made it into the garden.
If you save the seed and plant those seed next year and if your pumpkin is C. pepo (there are a few "pumpkins that are other species of cucurbita) like the summer squashes are, you will have mutant babies.
Remy

That might be what happened to me last year. Some of my cucumbers looked like they were halfway between a cuke and a zuchinni. (I called them zukumbers)

I thought I had some wierd cross pollination, but it could be that one or two vines in that bunch were a wierd hybrid. I never unravelled them to determine if they were all on the same vine.

[dragonfly7]

Originally Posted by remy

If you are not saving seeds, you need not worry about a thing except tending the plants
The cross pollination happens with the seeds, not this year's fruits. The pollination of squash never affect this year's fruit. Sometimes people plant a wonky seed, and then think it is from the current year, but it really isn't. The seed got that way before it ever made it into the garden.
If you save the seed and plant those seed next year and if your pumpkin is C. pepo (there are a few "pumpkins that are other species of cucurbita) like the summer squashes are, you will have mutant babies.
Remy

Thanks for clearing this up for me! Man we must have had the same problem of rogue seed in the past as we grew these things that were supposed to be zucchini and also grew acorn squash and some melons. We got soemthign that looked like a watermelon zucchini - they were good but quite odd.

I'd always heard that melons and squash won't cross so I had not been taught that melons won't cross with squash only with others in the pepo family as you said - the pumpkins I have are pepo, so they could produce rogue seed with the winter squash and summer squash, but so long as I will get the fruits I am planting for I don't mind what the seeds do.

Thanks for such a quick response! Off to put in the pumpkins now.

[Little Minnie]

Normal melons will not cross with squash, cucs or watermelon. All summer squash cross with c. pepo winter squash and that is most in many gardens. You have to isolate by 1/2 mile to keep seed pure, not on the other side of a yard. For me it isn't worth trying to save c. pepo seed (and I have a major allergy to squash plants), but growing one variety of cucs, melons, watermelons, c moschata and c maxima is doable.

[pepperhead212]

I had something happen that proves you have to separate squash considerably far away to prevent crossing. I have nobody anywhere near me that has a garden growing with squash, yet tonight I cut open a squash from last year - on the outside, it looked just like all the rest of the Seminole pumpkins I have ever grown, yet on the inside it was bright orange (normal), but a spaghetti squash! The entire inside shredded up, before even cooking. Crossed with something, but the 2x3 block area I live in has no other winter squash growers (not even pumpkins) - only zucchini growers. First time in all the years I have been growing this, or butternuts, that this happened. Weird, or what?

I have 6 more in the basement, and I am really curious to see if any others are this way, as I always get more than one on each plant.

This is why I always isolate things like this when I save seeds, even something I am growing no other varieties of.

[Ajla]

And you can always bag, hand pollinate and mark one of each sort for next year's seeds!

[dragonfly7]

Originally Posted by pepperhead212

I had something happen that proves you have to separate squash considerably far away to prevent crossing. I have nobody anywhere near me that has a garden growing with squash, yet tonight I cut open a squash from last year - on the outside, it looked just like all the rest of the Seminole pumpkins I have ever grown, yet on the inside it was bright orange (normal), but a spaghetti squash! The entire inside shredded up, before even cooking. Crossed with something, but the 2x3 block area I live in has no other winter squash growers (not even pumpkins) - only zucchini growers. First time in all the years I have been growing this, or butternuts, that this happened. Weird, or what?

I have 6 more in the basement, and I am really curious to see if any others are this way, as I always get more than one on each plant.

This is why I always isolate things like this when I save seeds, even something I am growing no other varieties of.

Hi pepperhead,

I found your comment very interesting, because I had this same experience two years ago with two store-bought(!) pumpkins. I bought them at my local IGA market. They were grown locally, I believe. They were beautiful and indistinguishable on the outside from being anything other than two pumpkins. However, when I cut them open to bake them for pumpkin pie it was a very different story. There is absolutely no question, one of them was a spaghetti squash in pumpkin's clothing.

I wonder if there is or was a major pumpkin seed supplier whose seed was contaminated with spaghetti squash... Was the seed you grew for these pumpkins seed you saved or seed you purchased? Now I'm curious to know.