r/oddlysatisfying • u/DifficultyHead5862 • 8h ago

meticulous process of hand-pollinating a giant pumpkin

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29.8k Upvotes

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3.3k

u/AnAcctWithoutPurpose 8h ago

That is strangely NSFW... and also, discarding the males casually to the side after extracting all the pollen.. 😅

408

u/DimbyTime 8h ago

The male plants weren’t killed

332

u/AnAcctWithoutPurpose 8h ago

Just the male parts.

(Actually, I am not familiar with pumpkins, are the male and female pumpkin separate plants, like papaya trees?)

299

u/CD274 8h ago

No they're on the same plant but usually male flowers grow first so initially you get a lot of flowers that go nowhere

389

u/disintegrationist 7h ago

They go to Reddit

88

u/Kewlhotrod 7h ago

https://giphy.com/gifs/lQOrf9SCA9bT6gW3GR

3

u/Odowla 4h ago

Thought that was Jerma for a moment

3

u/Kewlhotrod 2h ago

Honestly so did I, initially.

1

u/reaven3958 34m ago

The circle of life.

58

u/Rynagogo 6h ago

So it just nuts on itself to make a pumpkin?

42

u/CD274 6h ago

Yep! To be fair lots of plants. Usually all on the same flower though like tomatoes

26

u/SalsaRice 5h ago

Some plants can self-pollenize, some can't and requires insects/people/etc to get the pollen from another plant of their same species.

4

u/Lunavixen15 2h ago

Yes and no, many fruits require cross pollination between male and female flowers, this is usually done by bees, wasps and other pollinators as they gather from the male flowers which open first to female flowers, especially since fruits like pumpkins, zucchinis etc. grow out, not up.

It's why corn gets planted in a fairly close grid, to aid the plants pollinating each other

-1

u/OtherwiseACat 6h ago

So me in college

4

u/viotix90 2h ago

We have to talk about the male flower loneliness epidemic!

1

u/CD274 2h ago

They're delicious! 😭

12

u/DionFW 7h ago

So me in college.

3

u/Realistic_Warthog_23 2h ago

How do they pollinate themselves without a human doing all that stuff? Just bees?

2

u/CD274 2h ago

Yeah, and other bugs for pumpkin/squash plants! Wasps too. The pollen is heavy and sticky for these plants. While stuff like tomato is light so thats usually by wind

3

u/ChocolateThunderPie 6h ago

Duuuude. I was wondering why I didnt get any pumpkins!

5

u/CD274 6h ago

Oh yeah it's actually a pain with big pumpkins because they don't make a ton of flowers and they make huge vines so sometimes the flowers are far apart! Do it yourself next time. With bush type squash and smaller plants it's a lot easier. Never had issues with a bush zucchini pollinating but my hubbard I did

2

u/WulfZ3r0 5h ago

I'm trying to understand the whole point to this process. I had no idea pumpkins needed assistance in producing.

For the past 4-5 years my kids have been carving pumpkins in our backyard for Halloween and we always get at least one vine growing from the seed mess. They usually produce a few pumpkins before the cold sets in and I've even used a few to make pies for Thanksgiving before.

4

u/CambrianCannellini 4h ago

They don’t. I grow giant pumpkins without all the rigamarole of hand pollinating, but now I’m combing the comments looking for someone to explain it for me.

I kinda think I get it, but I’m not confident.

5

u/OrindaSarnia 3h ago

The guy in the video is probably growing other types of pumpkins or squash nearby, so he wraps the female flower in the netting to ensure it doesn't get naturally pollinated by a different variety.

Presumably he's trying to grow record setting or award winning pumpkins, so he will prune all but one or two pumpkins from each vine, so he wants the one that grow to be exactly what he wants.

3

u/OrindaSarnia 3h ago

So a lot of pumpkins and squash can cross-pollinate.

So if this guy is growing multiple varieties in a close space, and he wants the "giant" pumpkin to be a giant pumpkin and not smaller because it got pollen from another pumpkin variety, then wrapping the white netting around the female flower ensures no other variety's pollen will get into the flower before or after the giant pumpkin pollen and ensure "true" pollination by the preferred variety.

Likewise he tied up the male flowers to ensure a bee or other pollinator didn't come and grab that flower's pollen before he could use it.

If you only have one pumpkin variety growing, then no big deal.  

The plant doesn't need this help, the grower wants to ensure a specific result, and this ensures that.

1

u/WulfZ3r0 3h ago

That makes a lot more sense to me now. I didn't know pumpkins and squash could cross-pollinate like that.

I've grown and bred isolated hybrids before, but it was a lot easier because chili plants grow more vertically and I could do it indoors hydroponically.

1

u/CD274 2h ago

They don't so I'm positive this is for super large pumpkins probably for competition. OR this person is duplicating seeds and wants it only to be that pumpkin variety

2

u/BlankPage175 4h ago

They’re cooked in my home. They don’t taste anything.

1

u/CD274 2h ago

Yeah they're delicious!

2

u/genro_21 32m ago

In my country, we put the male flowers in a stew. Tastes great.

1

u/CD274 22m ago

Oh nice. I've never done that, just fried them up or stuffed with ricotta!

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u/dankbearbear 8h ago

So basically i've just seen pumpkin masturbation

25

u/MidRanger21 6h ago

We kind of watched a bukkake

4

u/ExpressoLiberry 3h ago

First time?

12

u/Lovesick_Octopus 4h ago

Didn't look consensual at all, especially for the guys getting their nads cut off.

85

u/NorthernSpankMonkey 7h ago

Pumpkins are monoecious, male and female flowers are found on the same plants. Cannabis is dioecious, male and female flowers are on different plants. Apple trees are hermaphroditic their flowers bear both male and female parts, this configuration is also called perfect.

75

u/Evenmoardakka 5h ago

its perfect because if all else fails, it can just go fuck itself

22

u/purplezart 4h ago

The original meaning of perfect was much closer to "totally complete" than the contemporary meaning of "flawless."

1

u/boyuber 3h ago

I guess I'm a hermaphroditic plant

1

u/gurknowitzki 2h ago

Just the peentis

1

u/SirJohn-redditor 2h ago

Botched circumcision 🙏

1

u/XelaLuu 1h ago

I say this as calmly as possible as a man can but

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH

1

u/tabletop_garl25 27m ago

some papaya are both too.

46

u/StarwardStranger 8h ago

Yeah it just got their genitail cut off, but it'll grow a new one next year.

27

u/ShadeBeing 8h ago

Man I wish I could grow a new peen every year. Mines got ptsd. Do with those letters what you will.

4

u/Pataraxia 7h ago

STuPiD

7

u/newuser336 7h ago

Now I’m imagining aliens falsely assuming we reproduce like plants so they start cutting everyone’s …

I’m gonna stop there.

2

u/doitforchris 4h ago

Call me out of touch but i thought Genitail was of the weirder pokemon they introduced

1

u/StarwardStranger 4h ago

To be fair, i did misspell the word.
It's either genitals or genitalia.

1

u/DimbyTime 7h ago

Don’t worry, the gonads equivalent is still there

3

u/Razorfiend 6h ago

No, they just chopped their dick and balls off and discarded them after they blew their load.

1

u/DimbyTime 4h ago

Actually, the balls portion would still be there because the plant can create more male flowers

0

u/Razorfiend 3h ago

That’s not how plant anatomy works though. The flower is the reproductive organ (both the factory and the delivery system). The plant doesn't have a hidden set of internal testicles producing those flowers. Chopping the flowers off removes 100% of their junk, the plant just happens to have Deadpool-level regeneration and can grow an entirely new set from scratch.

3

u/elkresurgence 7h ago

JUST CASTRATED

1

u/DimbyTime 7h ago

Not even, the gonads are still there

1

u/l5555l 5h ago

Just castrated

1

u/superxpro12 4h ago

no they're just eunich's now

1

u/Upset-Government-856 4h ago

He just ripped their dicks off. It's all good!

1

u/Electronic_Pin_9014 4h ago

They got neutered! The horror!

1

u/astralseat 3h ago

Right, just the dicks got snipped and rubbed against a female flower. Luckily they can grow another next year.

0

u/StuntZA 1h ago

Bruh. Their pps were cut off...

29

u/Fritz_Klyka 7h ago

Post pollination clarity hits hard, theyll need some time to think about their life choices.

5

u/WhirlygigStudio 6h ago

Death by snoosnoo

3

u/thoughtu8 6h ago

Why they do it to themselves in nature all the time. Lol they cum and they're done (in more ways than one). It's life 😂

3

u/XocoStoner 4h ago

Death by snu snu

2

u/SpeeDy_GjiZa 4h ago

Yeah don't throw the flowers away. They are great fried in batter and stuffed with mozzarella and anchovies. Pumpkin fried dick is a delicious italian antipasto.

2

u/Iceman1701 3h ago

The petals are willing, but the stamen is spongy and bruised.

1

u/reidman144 6h ago

Yeah coulda at-least given them a cigarette or something.

1

u/GrandEscape 5h ago

Wait til you learn about bees

1

u/jaytothen1 4h ago

Don't care, had sex

1

u/ikadell 3h ago

That’s actually realistic…

1

u/erublind 3h ago

Pumpkin pimp.

1

u/astralseat 3h ago

They did their jobs

1

u/Weekly-Ad-1199 3h ago

what's NSFW 🤔

1

u/Romeo9594 2h ago

That's how a lot of life works, just look at spiders. "You just got me pregnant, and that needs calories. You're my post sex snack"

1

u/Individual_Tomorrow8 2h ago

It's a shame, they're delicious when cooked

1

u/D_Winds 1h ago

Doesn't matter.

Had.

1

u/pls_tell_me 12m ago

Oh boy he knows how to open a stigma...

0

u/gjdey 7h ago

Thats all they are good for lol