We are having a pumpking growing competition at work and I live in an apartment, so I’m working with what I have 😆
The plant already produced many male flowers. From what I have read, the male flowers usually come out 10 - 14 days before the female flowers. They open up for a single day and then they close and fall off.
I found out that tey are edible, so I stuffed a few of them with some left overs as a culinary experiment.
And the first female flower has arrived!
This goes hard. Unironically if I walked into a guy’s apartment and saw this my opinion of them would increase.
Growing large fruit in your apartment is very baller
If the male flower die so soon, how do the female flowers get pollinated? I never understood that part.
Different plants make male/female flowers at different times. This is to prevent the plant from pollinating itself.
Since OP only has one plant, should they self-pollinate it with a paintbrush? It won’t aquire genetic diversity but it should produce a pumpkin or two, right?
My plan is to remove the petals from the freshest male flower available and rub that directly.
I store the previous set of male flowers in a cup with a bit of water in the fridge :
If I don’t pick a male flower, the next day it looks like this:
I did this in case that the male flowers would stop coming out when the females came. But I think my worry was not warranted… because the plant is swarming with male flowers. That’s why I have begun cooking them.
I am still not sure of whether I will pollinate a single flower to try to grow a large pumpkin, or if I will go for multiple pumpkins.
What’s the bottle to the left? What did the flowers taste like? Sorry for so many questions this is really cool though.
The bottle is a carbon dioxide tank. It is connected to a regulator that can open/close the valve to let CO2 out. During the day it brings the CO2 level under the leaves to around 800 - 1000 parts per million (ppm). Usually the level in the air is closer to 400 - 500 ppm, and fast growing plants can grow faster with some extra CO2 in the air to build into sugars during photosynthesis. At least in theory… For me it is an experiment in CO2 regulation as I have measured and decreased CO2 levels in the past (when growing mushrooms and tempeh) but I had never actively delivered it, so I thought this would be a good opportunity to learn.
It turns out pumpkin flowers are very fragrant, and the odor is very pleasant, but I am not good at describing smells with words, sorry… To me it smells like a mixture of a rhododendron flower and a pumpkin. I recently went to a wedding in which they served ricotta stuffed zuccini flowers (very similar flowers) and the cook clearly knew what she was doing, in that case the zuccini flowers still had some of the fragrance and this made the dish taste very special. In my attempt I filled the flowers with some curry rice and then pan-seared them in butter, and all the fragrance went away in the process. So the flower was just a vessel with the soft texture of a petal and the taste of browned butter. I did not succeed in keeping any flower flavor. It was a quick-and-dirty experiment… I would like to learn more about cooking with flowers while keeping some flavor.
Thank you for the thorough explanation.
I didn’t even know you can make tempeh grow faster that’s kinda cool to hear.
In the case of tempeh keeping the right ambient temperature (~30) and adding a bit of vinegar to the beans is the best way I have experienced to make it grow fast and healthy. The CO2 I only measure to check for stale air. The tempeh fungus breathes in oxygen and exhales CO2, and if you have a lot of tempeh in a small incubator the CO2 can get too high.
In some techniques for mushroom growing, the mycelium is grown inside of a tub. The fungus exhales CO2 into the closed tub and inhibits this high CO2 condition inhibits fruiting. The fruiting stage can be stimulated by using a fan to push out the CO2. In the case of tempeh one can surround the tempeh with fresh air to stimulate the tempeh to produce spores, which can then be ground with white rice to create a powder to inoculate a lot more tempeh.
I’m interested to know as well because the photo makes it look revolting lol
I don’t know about the bottle but I’ve stuffed pumpkin flowers with cheese , breaded and fried them, and served with a tiny drizzle of honey. Delicious. Look up recipes for squash blossoms or zucchini blossoms, they are basically the same. You remove the stamens so you just have a pouch.
You might have better luck indoors than outdoors, depending on where you live. Where I live, anything squash-related planted outdoors develops powdery mildew and dies. I have planted many pumpkins and successfully harvested one. Ever. Maybe I should plant some inside.
This is ridiculous and I love it. Good luck, hope you win!🍀
