Planting Squash-will they cross with each other?

I don't know if the winter squashes will cross with each other, but I had a yellow summer squah cross with a pumpkin and ended up with a HUGE yellow thing. Pickled it .....sold it at the farmers market. Not all mistakes are bad

 

Your cucumbers, watermelons, and cantaloupes won't cross with each other, or with the squashes.

Most (if not all) of your squashes are C. pepo, and probably will cross pollinate. Why do you care? Are you planning to save seeds?

 

Whether or not they cross won't affect what grows this season. Next year, if you've saved seed - yes.

So - if you want to make sure you get pure type seed - bag the female flower before it opens, then hand-pollinate it from a male flower, and keep it bagged until the flower withers. Keep track of that flower/fruit, and save the seeds from it. If you want to be super-careful, bag the male flower as well, so a bee doesn't drop some off-type pollen on it before you use it for pollination.

 

Which types will mix? Will a summer squash mix with a winter one? I have some yellow summer squash, and some mommoth winter squash. I do want to save seeds. Will I have to cover the flowers on the fruits I save my seed from?

 

southerngirl,

It's easier to assume they'll all mix. That's the problem with the squash family more than most vegetables.

Look here for seed saving information on the lady who "wrote the book" on melons... literally.

 

Unless you bag the flowers as Don says, you have to assume that all squashes will crosss.

Squash seed are about the cheapest things around, and most families only need a few hills. Why worry about saving seed?

Of course if you are willing to do the work, you need only one of each type of squash to produce two or three years' worth of seed.
Ox

 

i plan on having my pickling cucumbers grow next to my long salad cucumbers... will these two cross? and if they do, will the fruits at least stay true to type for this season? i wont be saving seed so i don't care about next year.

 

JgJ;
Your cucumbers for this year will be whatever the seeds were. However, if you save seed from them you will have crossed up pickling x salad cukes next year. Yes, they will cross, but it makes no difference to you this year.
Ox

 

thanks ox, for the $1.70, i think i can buy new seeds from the store, in order to not have to worry about cross-breeding and harvesting the seed... i could sell one jar of pickles to pay for the seeds that provide me with the rest of the batch.

 

So I gather from all your responses that the huge squash I ended up with came from a seed that was crossed the previous year. My mother never saved seed, she bought from Parks every year, but even back then I might have gotten them from Gurneys when she let me place my own order (I was a young teen when I made my garden monster )

 

In short, yes.

It can happen even with commercially grown seed.

Or it could have been a really strange mutation which occurs sometimes. Do you have any seed from the squash in question?

 

Goodness, no, that was over 20 years ago....but I have been futively trying to make the same mistake since. The recipe just isn't the same with either pumpkin or squash itself.

So now I know to plant them together in the summer....but whose seed do I then save, the squash or the pumpkin??