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Cross Pollinating Cucurbits?
FAQ: Will my cucumbers, squash and melons cross pollinate and be ruined?
<<I've heard about cross pollination ruining squashes, cukes
and melons (oh yeah, have four kinds of melons). Has anybody dealt with this? How?
What did you do? How did you know? Were the squashes bitter? Did they
look weird? I've been told not to plant them all together, but that's what I've
always done.>>
Nope, squash, cukes, and melons will NOT cross pollinate. You don't need to
worry about this a bit. Between VARIETIES of cukes, or melons, or squash, cross
pollination can occur. In fact if you get good cross pollination, you will have better
fruit. So make sure you have good bee populations. You need to be able to stand in your
veggie patch and see a bee move between flowers every second.
One tricky thing is that squash varieties includes pumpkins and day blooming
gourds. Cross pollination will not have any effect on this year's fruit but is important
if you plan to save seeds for the next year.
The flesh of the fruit is entirely from the mother plant. Only the seeds are
affected by the daddy. Therefore with corn varieties, where you eat the seed, it is
important to AVOID cross pollination for this year. Years ago I planted popcorn near my
sweet corn and learned this lesson.
The only time I know of fruit being affected by cross pollination is
with peppers, which cross freely between varieties. This appears to be an exception to
what I said above, but actually it isn't. If you plant hot peppers and mild ones together,
and they cross, you may get a little more heat that you expected with the mild varieties.
That is because you are also eating the seeds with the fruit, and the "heat" is
in the seeds.\
I don't believe you! My cukes and yellow squash crossed and my squash turned green!
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These yellow squash fruits are from plants infected with a virus. It has nothing to do with cross pollination. The fruits are edible; the virus will have no effect on humans. Infected plants will cease production and die sooner, but, in the meantime, there's no reason to throw these fruits away.
For more on squash viruses from Clemson...
