A Beautiful Pumpkin and my Pumpkin Breeding Goals

Tips, Tricks

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This is my favorite vegetable breeding book, Carol Deppe's "Breed Your Own Vegetable Varieties": http://amzn.to/2cNCNzc I found a lovely pumpkin at a local market and we're going to see what it's like and whether it's worth adding to our genetic lines as we seek to breed better pumpkins. I have worked with breeding Seminole pumpkins back in my Florida garden but have not been able to get those seeds into the country yet. Breeding pumpkins isn't that hard but it takes a little skill and proper pollination techniques to get what you want long-term. It's also really fun. These seem to be Curcurbita moschata, which is easy to grow in a tropical climate. We shall see!

Comments

it's a fairytale I think its not ripe yet the skin needs to be a deep tan

Its Beautiful. Now I have 2 favorites 'Fairytale' & now Crookneck.
Did you know , both squash and pumpkin belong to the same family (the cucurbitaceae )

Akootamatada, it means no worries. You' re a cultavarist. It's a cute. Do over in freestyle, now. 😀😊😜

Are we going to get to see the inside?

I'm gonna plant yo seeeeeds.....

Love the seminole. great storage and in a good season seems to out race the vine borer. I plant it every year.

The music; The result of inbreeding Frankie Vallie and the Four Seasons with The Bee Gees, amirite?

Ahhhhh ... pumpkin porn ... good to see that this project has you excited and back on a positive track! Are you kin of Don Good... of Kanapaha?

It almost looks like an Acorn Squash, lol

The problem with Seminole pumpkins is they don't fruit very much. Do you have tips for that? My garden group friends all say it's a problem. Lots of male flowers but hardly any female flowers and they don't pollinate on their own. We were wondering if the heat prevents pollination... this was last spring when the weather turned HOT very early in the year. I planted about 6 vines that grew like crazy but only got one pumpkin. I only saw three female flowers. I do think the Seminole pumpkins are very tasty (much better than traditional pumpkins) but the do need to be pureed. They're delicious. I'd like to get a lot more of them than we did. Selecting pumpkins that produce more fruits would be another nice thing to build into a special line of tropical pumpkins.

David you gotta say what happened to your hand. Poor guy.

That pumpkin is a thing of beauty! I thought i was going to breed strains of vegetables but then i discovered the joys of picking F1's apart into F2 populations and i must say i find it more interesting. Doing that with the pumpkins, tomatoes, beans and kales right now. See what weirdness comes rolling out of those. Maybe some day i find some specimens i want to purify but right now, i'm having way too much fun! I'm also going to order a bag of F2 seeds from red cabbage and savoy. They look stunning. Saves me a year polinating them by hand myself. 2 years even... My kale looks awesome, there is definitely some red cabbage in there somewhere but when it comes to taste and pest resistance, i'm going for dino kale next year anyway. I like it, it's so compact. Or maybe i'll let the whole field of brassica flower and pollinate them willy nilly, see what i get, i don't know where i'm going! I love variety. I should have been a plantbreeder. I have watched numerous plantbreeding lectures but geez, it still goes way over my head. Luckily, what i'm missing in intellect is compensated by passion for plantlife. ;)

Hi David, what is the best time of year to plant the Seminole Pumpkin in CFL?I have some seeds so I planted them and they have taken off growing. Do you think I'll get pumpkins before it gets too cold? I'm thinking I got till at least Jan. for that to happen. I just got impatient and wanted to get some green growing! I'll plant again in Spring for sure.