HAND Pollinate Your Squash for Guaranteed Harvest!

Sometimes our plants need a little helping hand from us and zucchini or really any squash are no strangers to needing some manual pollination. Its quite easy to tell the male flower and female flower apart and from there its just a matter of making things happen. Some plants, like tomatoes and peppers, have both flowers in one and don't really need any help in this way!

[CherriesInAugust]

Never thought id see flowers doing the deed

[davefigtherd]

Thankfully God has blessed my garden with an abundance of bees. I love free labor.

[not-so-great-ray]

Well, now I know that even food gets more action than me

[_up_moon]

My fellow gardeners: You can also store the flower/q-tip in the fridge in case you have female flowers open the next morning, but no male flowers. I have used this is the past with success. The pollen doesn't last very long though, so you have to replace your backup as soon as you have another male flower. A single male flower can pollinate many female flowers.

*Note: I keep them in a plastic baggie with air inflated before I close the baggie and the stem wrapped in a damp paper towel.

[tpot]

Hats off for managing to say that with a straight face...

[WhoFramedMSG]

Wow bro you gotta label this video nsfw 🥵

[marialovesmusicalot]

You can eat the petals too! They are so delicious I promise! I sautée them and they taste squashy 😋

[ToUnderstandAFool]

You can just eat the flower. We used to bread and fry them

[bananakittycat]

A summer squash plant popped up in my front yard and i was like "OMG !!!! I KNOW SOMEONE WHO'LL KNOW HOW TO TAKE CARE OF THIS!" so i immediately went to youtube and searched for your channel! I love learning about plants and im glad i found your channel ao i can start growing my own produce!

[glorygloryholeallelujah]

*”Hey neighbor! Whatcha up to?”*
_”Gently rubbing my plant’s naughty-bits together.”_
*”….I’ll come back later.”*

[stevesmith]

Used to have a neighbor with bees that took care of this but had to move. I use a q-tip now. Works great

[CloudNey]

When you don't take the initiative, but have good friends to help you in the process

[zephra]

This short led to a 20 minute rabbit hole that was a rollercoaster of emotions on whether a plant I grew in my backyard is actually a pumpkin or not only to find out that squash is pumpkin.

[joshuamilano]

Did... did I just watch Plant pornography?

[soundaholixx]

Squash flowers are actually very tasty and a great ingredient for traditional italian pizza with fresh muzz

[Velikatheia]

Great timing, my cucumbers, pumpkins and zucchinis are flowering like crazy.

[Yur_wey]

I have found that the male and separate female flower trait is found in all cucurbits, I'm not sure if its found in other families, but all cucurbits have it, all squash, pumpkin, cucumbers, melons, and chayotes... I wonder if they evolved prior or after hermaphrodite flowers? super cool... 😊

[lydialevorson]

I worked at a 8 acre veggie farm one summer and they had rows on rows of zucchini’s and other squashes. Thankfully we never had to hand pollinate because the bees would do it all for us. It was so so cool seeing the bees every single morning flying around and doing their job getting all the pollen transferred. It wasn’t even his bees or anything it was just our normal native bees it was awesome to witness

[Cassie-cseg]

Didn't know you can do this. I am SO going to use this against my father's garden 😂. Watch out dad that shinny golden scissors is MINE! 😂😂😂😂

[ST-vtnu]

One summer we had a courgete plant that kept flowering one sex at a time. We got 0 courgettes that year 😅