pumpkin fest

Happy fall!! We would like to share with you the story of our pumpkins.

Every year we do something new in our garden, and this year we decided to do pumpkins. We thought since we were gone all summer, we could at least enjoy them when we got back. But when we came back in August, we found all our pumpkins looked like this

And they would just shrivel up. Shrivel, shrivel, shrivel, week after week after week! Finally we thought something must certainly be wrong and we checked the internet. Low and behold, we found out that there is a bee shortage nowadays and if your pumpkins were shriveling, it was likley because they were not polinated. Then, we learned some amazing things.

Did you know that pumpkin vines have both male and female flowers? The male flowers (like the one above) are ripe and open for a few days, waiting for the female flowers to open up (for only like an hour in the early morning.) At just that time, a bee needs to come along spread the pollen from the male to the female. So with no bees, the flowers were not being polinated and our pumpkins were shriveling!

So anybody needs to grow pumpkins if you need a reproductive lesson. The kids got busy with watching the flowers, spreading the pollen at just the right time, and guess what!

WE GOT ONE PUMPKIN!! It is green and not quite ready for carving, so we went to the pumpkin farm and got a few more. But that's another blog!! -C