Wednesday, August 28, 2013

Accidental squash hybrid

I like to save seed. There's just so many reasons to save the seed from what we grow, reasons I'll go into in another post someday soon.

But sometimes, you don't get what you thought you were going to get.

Last year, I planted my butternut squash about 50 feet from my pumpkins, separated by a patch of watermelons and cantaloupe, which should have been enough to prevent cross pollination. So last fall, I picked a couple of the best looking squash from the best looking plant, and kept a couple envelopes of seed. I keep the seed from each fruit separate, so that I can tell which ones grow the best. By chance, I was given a few packets of butternut squash seed to try and I planted those in my main squash patch and I planted my saved seed in a second, smaller patch. I was a little surprised when the second patch plants grew long vines instead of the shorter vines and bushy form that my butternuts usually have. I was even more curious when they didn't set fruit when my other squash did. But gardening season is busy and I didn't think too much of it until one day a few weeks ago, I went to take a closer look at the plants and found very small, approximately 5 inch pumpkins growing on the plants.

What?

The only thing I can assume is that one of the pumpkin vines grew very long, as mine did last year. There were some vines that grew upwards of 50 feet, grew up a lilac bush, and then produced a 10 pound pumpkin 7 feet off the ground, hanging from that lilac bush. If a pumpkin vine grew close to the squash, I suppose it could have cross pollinated, and then just by chance I saved seed from that particular squash.

So I started doing some research on the subject, and lo and behold, butternut squash can hybridize with some species of pumpkins. Interspecific hybrids are rare, but this just happens to be one that can happen. The Latin name of butternut squash is Cucurbita moschata. The Latin name of most varieties of orange pumpkin is Cucurbita pepo. In my research, I found a paper published by Purdue University stating that those two species can hybridize.

Neat!

My mini-pumpkins are not very productive. Out of approximately 20 plants they have only produced about 8 fruit. They grow very quickly to about 5 inches across, and then start to turn orange. I don't imagine that soil fertility is the reason for their small size, as they were planted in an old chicken run, complete with a whole summer worth of chicken poop. However, the neat factor of this even though it's not what I was hoping to grow, is very high. The vines are still setting fruit, so maybe I'll end up with some number of cute little pumpkins out of it.



Another interesting thing about this is that this small patch of hybrid squash/pumpkins is a LONG distance from any other Cucurbita species of plants. Somewhere in the vicinity of 200 feet. That means that these plants have most likely self pollinated to produce the fruit that they have set. That means that they are not sterile and if I save and plant seed from them, I might get yet another interesting result. Or, the seed could be sterile and I'll get nothing. Either way, I love to tinker so this is pretty cool to me.

Another point worth mentioning is that hybrids of those two species can be crossed back with one of the parent species. This hybrid is of butternut squash and a small-medium sized pumpkin similar to a Jack-O-Lantern cultivar. I did not plant all of the seed from that batch, so next summer I'll plant some of them strategically in an isolated Connecticut Field pumpkin test patch, and some more in an isolated butternut squash patch, and see what I get out of those crosses. I might get a better tasting, very large pumpkin. Or I might get some other weirdness. Or I may get nothing. But, there's something pretty neat about possibly developing my own variety of pumpkin, squash, or whatever the end result might be.

I am very curious to hear from anyone who has experience with this situation, as I would like to learn more about how to properly manage the future experiments with this seed.


1 comment:

  1. Well, I know that you posted this last year, but with squash, 200 feet may not be enough. Squash is insect pollinated and insects can travel a long way (although they tend to stick with what they have). So it is entirely possible to have two squash patches 200 feet apart that get pollinated by insects that go from one patch to another (I've watched bees do this. They start in one patch and pretty soon, they zoom off and there they are in the other patch).

    The above is why you need to follow the following procedure if you want self pollinated plants:

    1. cover the female blossom that you want to pollinate once it starts to open (generally this is done with a paper or cloth bag of some sort) with a breathable cover (but insect proof).

    2. Once the female flower is ready, pick a male flower from the same plant and gently pull off the petals so that the anthers (with the pollen) are exposed.

    3. Use the male flower (the anthers) to pollinate the female flower.

    4. Gently tie the female flower closed (or cover it again). Mark the flower (some people tie a string loosely around the stem) so that you know which squash is self pollinated.

    5. Allow to ripen all the way, the more, the better.

    6. Dry the seeds.

    Hope this helps! There is more on line. The gardener's forum has quite a bit on winter squash/summer squash hybrids.

    EL

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