Assisted reproduction in the pumpkin patch

If you’re a Fat Carrot Farm customer then there’s a good chance that you’ve eaten Delicata squash and there’s also a good chance that you’ve thought about saving some of the seed so that you could grow some yourself given how delicious they are.

We first ate Delicata in Seattle in 1998. These little pumpkins when split in half lengthways and roasted are such a treat to eat skin, seeds and all. When we moved to Hobart we were excited to find that we could get seed from Phoenix Seeds so we started growing them here. 

As tempting as it might be to scoop out a few seeds to save before you pop that Delicata in the oven let me just say ….DON’T!!

The cucurbit family are amongst the most promiscuous of plants and the pollen from any member of this family (pumpkin, zucchini or cucumber) will happily fertilise the female flowers of the Delicata when deposited by a roaming insect. Pollination must occur for the Delicata to develop but as long as the father (pollen source) is a member of the cucurbit family a beautiful and delicious Delicata pumpkin will be born. The seeds of this baby Delicata however, will be hybrids (not pure) their mother was a delicata but their father was most likely not. And this is completely fine if all you are planning to do is eat the Delicata but if you wanted the seed beware. From the few plants that we have accidentally grown from hybrid seed nothing even vaguely edible has arisen.

Hybrids can be some of the most vigorous and prolific vegetable varieties but not just any old hybrid. There is a lot of selection undertaken to find those amazing ones.

Sadly Phoenix seeds no longer exists but happily our friend Paulette inherited their stock of Delicata seed which she has been growing and sharing. This stock is now dwindling and getting old and we were talking about needing some new stock.

To grow a stock of good quality Delicata for seed requires it to be grown so far away from any other curcurbit plants that no flying insect can bring in the wrong pollen.

The other option is to grow your Delicata in an insect free zone and then get in there yourself and play pollinator. I thought I’d like to give that a go.

I went to the tip shop and found myself a screen tent and set it up in a patch in the chook run and planted 5  Delicata seedlings from Paulette and waited for them to grow.

It didn’t take too long.

 

Now that they are flowering the fun has begun. Every day or two I crawl inside the screen tent and firstly I look for the male Delicata flowers which have tall thin stems. Then, using a feather, I lightly brush it over the anthers (the yellow bit in the middle) to pick up some pollen grains (as if I were a bee).

Then it’s time to find a female flower and consummate the act. The female flowers have much shorter stems and there is a swelling on the stem just below the flower that will become the pumpkin if I do the fertilisation right. With my pollen laden feather I brush the stigma (the yellow bits in the middle) to deposit some pollen. If I’m too rough the whole flower falls off the stem and that’s a fail but if I’m super gentle its likely that many, many pollen grains are deposited and pollen tubes will start to form down into the stigma to transport the pollen to the ovule for fertilisation.

It’ll be another whole year before I can know whether the seed that I collect from these assisted reproduction babies is pure or if some rogue insects got into the tent and wreaked havoc. I’ve got my fingers crossed and if you like Delicata you should too.

BP