Are squashes self fertile, or do you need two plants of the same variety to save seeds that are true?

arnorrian wrote: ↑Tue Jan 14, 2020 12:08 pm Are squashes self fertile, or do you need two plants of the same variety to save seeds that are true?

Hey Milos,

squashes cross pollinate VERY easily - extremely promiscuous! lol. So, firstly, you need to find out the scientific name of the squash variety that you are planning to save seeds from.

You can save seeds if e.g you are growing Cucurbita moschata (e.g. Waltham) and Cucurbita maxima (e.g. Uchiki Kuri), side by side or close by together.

If you grow all varieties that belong to C.moshata (or C.maxima together) together, you will end up with ´weirdo´ plants from saved seeds. We call them ´Ornamental´ squashes and they can be posionous too.

Either that, you will need to keep a ´far´ distance or hand pollinate and bag the blooms I reckon.

I hope that helps with my explanation.

Thanks. I'm planning to use bagging and hand pollination, but I'm not sure if squashes are self pollinating. can I take pollen from a male flower and place it onto a female flower on the same plant? Will this lead to fertile seeds? I have very limited space, and if I need two plants from a variety to be able to save seeds I need to consider if I should do it at all.

I have this link that explains a little better - look for the pumpkins,courgettes, marrows and squashes section

https://www.realseeds.co.uk/seedsavinginfo.html

Another recommended book which I have is

The Manual of Seed Saving - Andrea Heistinger

I only grew Uchiki Kuri and saved the seeds. I didn´t bother with 2 different varieties because I suspect after reading the literature that it would be too much of a hassle for me. Sorry =(

Squash are self pollinating.
Male and female on same plant.

Thanks, guys!

Happy to help. On that link, you can print (or save as a file) a 5 page seed saving booklet or a 1 page concise/basic seed saving info. I have both for easy reference.

[mention]arnorrian[/mention]
You only need one plant. All the squash species that come to mind off-hand (C. maxima, C. pepo, C. moschata, C. argyrosperma, and C. ficifolia) are monoecious, which means a single plant will produce male flowers and it will also produce female flowers (but a single flower only has one sex, unlike tomatoes, which have perfect flowers with both female and male parts).

The female squash flowers look like they have a little fruit underneath the flower (and if fertilized, that's what grows into fruit). The male flowers don't. The insides of the flowers look different, too.

Squash are easy to cross-pollinate by hand. You can take pollen from a male flower and put it on a female flower, and it can work.

A small minority of squash are parthenocarpic. These will produce fruit even if they're not pollinated (but if they're not pollinated, they'll be seedless).

Someimes the first flowers you will see will be all male flowers, but if you aren't getting enough fruit set after the female flowers show up, you can either pick a male flower from even the same vine or variety, peel the petals back and poke it into the female flower, or use a small paint type or make up brush to collect the pollen and fertilize the female flower.

I have to admit, I had never heard of any cross pollinated squash being poisonous before you made that statement. May I ask where you have learned this?

TheDante wrote: ↑Tue Jan 14, 2020 12:41 pm

arnorrian wrote: ↑Tue Jan 14, 2020 12:08 pm Are squashes self fertile, or do you need two plants of the same variety to save seeds that are true?

Hey Milos,

squashes cross pollinate VERY easily - extremely promiscuous! lol. So, firstly, you need to find out the scientific name of the squash variety that you are planning to save seeds from.

You can save seeds if e.g you are growing Cucurbita moschata (e.g. Waltham) and Cucurbita maxima (e.g. Uchiki Kuri), side by side or close by together.

If you grow all varieties that belong to C.moshata (or C.maxima together) together, you will end up with ´weirdo´ plants from saved seeds. We call them ´Ornamental´ squashes and they can be posionous too.

Either that, you will need to keep a ´far´ distance or hand pollinate and bag the blooms I reckon.

I hope that helps with my explanation.

[mention]imp[/mention] [mention]arnorrian[/mention]
If the toxins in consideration are cucurbitacins, they're bitter. So, you can taste them if they exist in considerable amounts. I've never had a crossed squash taste particularly bitter. I think one of the parents would have to be toxic, in most circumstances, for the child to be. I mean, like say a craft gourd (C. pepo type) crosses your zucchini—then the child might be toxic, since those craft gourds are high in cucurbitacins, I believe.

In low amounts, I don't think cucurbitacins are particularly (if at all) harmful.

Maybe arnorrian read this from the Wikipedia article on cucurbitacins:

"The high concentration of toxin in the plants could result from cross-pollination[17] with wild cucurbitaceae species, or from plant growth stress due to high temperature and drought.[18]"

I'm not sure how common wild species are, but I've never seen any, to my knowledge, personally. They do exist, though, of course.

Thank you for the link, TheDante.

Continuing my other post, I guess not everyone tastes bitter tastes equally. So, be careful!

Here is the some of ALL I know about squash. 90% of the time your squash production will end with powdery mildew. While it can be slowed a little-- there is no cure. The big boys that grow squash for a living, spend big bucks on the most prized powdery mildew resistant seed varieties. They can't risk losing acres of crops prematurely.
They buy their seed by the thousands. Squash seed has 3 good years storage life, then it does a quick nose dive. So small timers will have to buy the seed by the hundred, just to save a little-- or pay through the nose for a small purchase of 50 seeds, or less.  I paid through the nose several times, there is an advantage. The squash tastes as good as heirloom. And the plants live weeks longer. I'm currently back to the old cheap heirloom squash. I just plant them in 3 separate waves, knowing they will die of powdery mildew. You can collect heirloom squash seed, if you let the squash mature to where it is practically a gourd. None of your seed will germinate collected from the eatable stage of a squash. It's probably better to just buy the heirloom seed-- it's pretty cheap. And you won't hurt yourself trying to open a hard skin squash. Those high dollar hybrid squash varieties that the professionals plant??--  Do not collect the seeds from those varieties. Thinking you can get around the cost. F-2 seeds are sterile most of the time-- LOL. You can't get around the high cost of the best varieties. I tried every way possible.
 I know nothing about bitter, or poisonous squash. Never eat things you fear. And never believe everything you read. Because I plant multiple varieties of squash and zucchini in 3 separate waves. This means I need 3 different locations-- just for summer squash alone. Then I need 2 different locations for my Cushaw, and ButterNut winter squash. Plus I got to separate everything from the Cucumbers. You want PM fast? Plant your squash near those cucumbers. Plus I got melons' to grow?   If I separated each variety of squash, I'd need 100 different locations. I got multi-varieties of summer squash in the same patch together. It is one patch of cross pollination. I can watch the bees doing it myself.
It all eats good, and I have no fear of dying from it. The downside is---weaker powdery mildew varieties invite PM in faster. ALL my plant separation is done as a means of PM control. Cross pollination is never a factor in my thoughts, because I don't collect seeds anymore.
PS-- If cross pollination of squash was a serious deadly problem-- all my kin would have died before I was born.

It’s odd about squash and their potential to produce subsequent generations of toxic squash. I knew of a gardener that grew some ordinary cultivar of zucchini from I believe it was Burpee seeds, but, whatever, an established or well know seed vendor and the squash it produced made he and his wife ill. Not once, but twice. Once it was chalked up to a coincidence illness, twice, not so much. But, he didn’t save seed from squash and it seems likely the toxic cross happened at the seed vendors operation, if that is what really happened. I do know that after eating this squash from that plant, the couple had major intestinal and other temporary health issues. Seems odd it would be something else causing the health issues if it happened twice.

karstopography. Could be some chemical composition change that some can't handle. My son had a playmate that a bite of peanut butter could kill. He wasn't allowed to eat in my house. Someday a squash might kill me. But as of yet, I've never been sick, and pick it by the wheel barrow. Maybe I should stop giving it away? If you observe bees, you know a squash bloom is only open for a short time in the morning hours. It is what bees prefer. Planting squash 100' feet apart going to save you from the this deadly vegetable. Because bees go to the squash first every time.

One seed company in the UK this year had to put a warning out about a variety of courgette (zucchini) as it was producing extremely bitter fruit. The seed company said it was likely a result of crossing with a wild cucurbit.

There are countless squash hybrids out there, and this is the first time I've heard of someone getting sick from one of them. I grow a hybrid moschata butternut every year (polaris), and this year I have a hybrid of two species - tetsukabuto, which is a maxima x moschata, which I grew years ago, and it was SVB resistant. But it is very edible, despite being a hybrid of two species.

https://www.livescience.com/62158-toxic ... -loss.html

Unintentional hybrid Squash linked to hair loss.

I like bitter stuff and tolerate it more than others.
I'll have to remember this from now on.
Never even had a bitter squash that I remember.