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Nh

im patiently awaiting for my first females to open on my two largest plants. these plants are only 10 to 14 ft long with secondary vines at the longest, 4 to 5 ft. im only planning on having one pumpkin per plant. ill probably self pollinate both plants and not inter mix the two. none of my male flowers have opened yet, though it appears everything is coming together. im wondering if i can go ahead and start pinching the many smaller, newer male flowers that i know will be pinched eventually after pollination occurs. ther are so many that are being produced that will not be used so does it make sense to get rid of them? also will this help accelerate or help the overall plant size?

7/10/2006 10:35:48 PM

Ctpumpkin@optonline.net

If you're sure you won't need them all then start snipping. They serve no purpose other than to attract pests & suck energy from the plant.

7/10/2006 11:49:50 PM

Cameron,ontario Team Lunatic

I pinch off all males once I know I won't need any more of them. At current pace, all the remaining males will open by the 15th of July. All the others have been pinched off earlier when I was removing the vines off the secondaries. I have 12 pumpkins pollinated on 5 plants so far & only need to do a couple more on two of the plants to finish off my pollination plans. I will trim it down to 1 pumpkin per plant over the next two weeks or so depending on growth rates, shape & positioning on the vine. After the 15th, I don't want to waste any energy producing male & female flowers that could be used to grow a bigger pumpkin. Hope this helps.

Phil

7/11/2006 8:03:53 AM

San Jose garysand@pacbell.net

you may want to wait until you have a keeper going, like basketball size, to trim all males away, or you might be sorry when you have no punkins in Oct.

7/11/2006 8:44:42 PM