Monday, July 12, 2010

Flowering like mad

I counted 13 male flowers open on my sugar pumpkin vine this morning with no female flowers even close to opening on either of my pumpkin plants. Up until now I haven't seen any more than 2 or 3 males open at a time.

2 comments:

RODNEY said...

MY PUMPKIN PLANTS ARE STILL SMALL WITH FEW LARGE LEAVES AND ARE NOW FLOWERING SHOULD I PICK OFF THE MALE AND FEMALE PODS

Jeff said...

You could remove the flowers if you think it's too early for your plant to be producing but they only last for a day or two anyways. You could wait and see is any of the females do get pollinated and then remove the new pumpkin.

If the plant is still small and manages to start producing pumpkins, there's a good chance those pumpkins will not amount to much. The good thing about pumpkins is that if the plant is healthy and well cared for, it will continue to grow all season and should produce more flowers.

Sometimes when a plant is under stress it will flower early. I guess they sense the stress and figure the season (or their life) is about to end so they start flowering to get their seeds out there and fulfil their destiny before it's too late.