Pollinating Gourds by Hand for Genetic Purity and Cross-Breeding Control

Insects are the typical pollinator for the average gourd grower, and they typically do a good job of insuring you will harvest plenty of fruit. However, for the individual who wants to preserve a gourd specie or design his or her own variety of gourd, more control of the genetic materials being passed from the male to the female is crucial. Pollination left to the moths is unpredictable, and you can have Marankas crossing with bottle gourds and long gourds and end up with some really weird combinations. This is and can be fun also, but it is important that we at least try to preserve the known varieties and possibly even develop new varieties.

Both of the following methods of hand pollination require learning about what time your male flowers open, and how they look when the pollen is ready, but they have not opened yet. If you take pollen from a male flower that has already opened, it may already have some pollen from another male flower of a different type of gourd. If you are doing this for controlled genetics or variety preservation, this contamination can ruin a years effort, so be sure you select male flowers that are ready to pollinate, but that no pollinating insects have been able to enter yet.

Hand pollination of gourds requires a little patience at first, but anyone can do it with a little practice. There are two primary methods of hand pollination of gourds, one is slightly easier, the other might require developing the right touch, but is the preferable method in my opinion. The first method is the use of a paint brush. Using a very small or fine artists soft hair paint brush, you can gently draw some pollen from the male flower to apply to the female flower. Two ways of doing this are, one to go back and forth from the male to the female, or the other way is to go from male flower to male flower collecting lots of pollen and depositing this pollen into the corner of a baggie or something to hold it until you have enough to start pollinating female flowers.