With the Squashes cross pollination is easy as pie. With the melons it's a bit trickier simply because the flowers are smaller.
Male squash flowers are usually the more numerous. Male flowers are on a flower stem. Female flowers have the immature squash right behind them. Ya simply pick a male flower carefully and kinda pull the petals off to make doing the deed easier. Or you can just pull the petals back. The orange ball shaped thing in the middle with orangish yellow moist dust on it is called the stamen. That dust is the pollen.
You will choose a good female flower that is just opening, so around 9 am is a good time to do this.
Any time of day will work, but the bugs might have done some pollinating. If that happens, some of the seeds might not be the cross you intended, so try for when the flower just opened. If a bit early, it is not cheating to very carefully help the female flower open.
Inside the female flower is a several parted thing in the middle, at the same kind of place that stamen is in the male flower. It kinda has grooves in it. This is called the stigma.
What you're gonna do is put the pollen onto the stigma by lightly rolling the male flower's stamen on the female flower's stigma.
After doing that some might want to close the female flower's petals back up using a twist tie from a bread bag or a garbage bag. Those are bigger and easier. If you don't do this part you might get a few seeds pollinated by bugs from an unintended male flower.
Or you could remove all the other male flowers for a couple days to stop unwanted pollinations.
There are a couple things to know about Squash:
SQUASH COME IN 4 SPECIES
Normally, one species will not cross with another species.
1) pepo; pepo squashes are the regular zucchini, regular jack o lantern pumpkins, spaghetti squash. patty pans, most summer squashes such as crookneck and straightneck, acorn squash, and some others i'm sure im forgetting.oh yea, some small gourds count.
2) argyospyra, or however they spell it; these are all the true cushaws
3) maxima; big max and dills atlantic giants, banana, candyroaster, turks turbans, hubbards, chioggia, and a whole bunch of others. this is a very diverse species.
4) moschata; all the true butternuts, tromboncino, kikuza, musquee de provence, some oriental pumpkins, seminole pumpkin, and others.
(i hear tell some outfit in south america can cross ceretain maximas with certain moschata, and for it to make fruit, it has to have a special pollinator.)
It is ok to do your own version of pollinating. you may well have a better way.
:bee
