Pollinating Your Squash Plants.

Updated: Jul 23, 2020

If your squash plants are getting overgrown and you need to make so space you can actually pollinate the female plant by hand. So you can prune around the main plant and make space for other plants or for maximum growth.

Squash plants produce both male and female flowers. The male's flowers open first with the females appearing second. The male flowers pollinate the female flowers and then they drop off the plant, as their job is done. Female flowers once pollinated produce squash.

A german turnip that is getting some attention

Our summer squash plant

Which one is which?

You can visibly spot the difference between male and female flowers by looking at their stems.

The male flower sits upon a skinny stem 2 or more inches long, whereas the female flowers have swollen stems that look like mini versions of squash.

This is one of our summer squash plants, the flower on the left is male and the right is female

Hand Pollination

"Best if preformed in the morning, simply cut off the male flower and carefully remove its petals. Brush the pollen (use a small paint brush) from the male onto the female’s stigmas. Each male has enough pollen to cover multiple females."

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