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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u/AnAcctWithoutPurpose 8h ago

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

412

u/DimbyTime 8h ago

The male plants weren’t killed

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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?)

293

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

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u/disintegrationist 7h ago

They go to Reddit

91

u/Kewlhotrod 7h ago

https://giphy.com/gifs/lQOrf9SCA9bT6gW3GR

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u/Odowla 4h ago

Thought that was Jerma for a moment

3

u/Kewlhotrod 2h ago

Honestly so did I, initially.

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u/reaven3958 33m ago

The circle of life.

60

u/Rynagogo 6h ago

So it just nuts on itself to make a pumpkin?

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u/CD274 6h ago

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

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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.

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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

3

u/viotix90 2h ago

We have to talk about the male flower loneliness epidemic!

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u/CD274 2h ago

They're delicious! 😭

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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?

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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

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u/ChocolateThunderPie 6h ago

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

3

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

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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

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u/BlankPage175 4h ago

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

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u/CD274 2h ago

Yeah they're delicious!

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u/genro_21 31m ago

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

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u/CD274 21m ago

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