It's been a long time since visiting this great website - I've missed checking in and reading all about everyone's lives and gardens. Has anyone had problems growing cucumbers and squash in the same vegetable bed? I have limited space, have Japanese cucumbers, heirloom straight neck yellow squash and regular old zucchini squash and am worried that I will end up with Frank- en-squash via cross pollination.
There is a high risk of X-pollinisation, but the fruit will not be affected, it is just the seeds that may give rise to weird things. If you want to pollinise a squash, then before the female flower opens, make sure you get rid of the male flowers on all the other plants, you can also take an open male flower from the same species with lots of pollen and either put it upside down onto the newly opened female flower or rub the pollen onto the female flower. This hand pollination is also good to do to the first squashes if you don´t have many bees. this applies to cucumbers and melons.
Hiya 4G--Great to see you back on here. I have missed you. Don't worry about cross pollinating. The only thing that I have noticed, is with two or more different corn sorts. Good luck this year. Keep us posted.
Hi Sjoerd ! Ditto Once it cools off today (About 80 degrees F ) I will get those babies in the ground. Today I noticed your, and others great input, from several years ago on this same subject, highlighting problems with corn. That is so darn interesting how that works. Thanks so much.
Cross pollinating only affects the seed for next year. Does not affect the current years crop. But sometimes its not a bad thing. One year we still had squash, zuchinni and pumpkins when we plowed the garden under. About a month later we saw those plants starting to grow. The plants looked the same but we had rainbow colored veggies . And boy were they good ! If you can imagine a slightly sweet squash and zuchinni . They were delicious ! I tried to save some seed but of course they never germinated. I did not let the veggie stay on the plant long enough to mature.
