Sexing my Gourds

Just got in from a quickie....I had two female gourds that needed to be hand-pollinated.  It's very late in the season and I don't know if they'll have enough growing time to mature but we're trying to keep the females pollinated anyway.

The picture on the left is of a male gourd flower and the one on the right is a female.  You can tell the female by the little swollen gourd shape at the bottom of the petals. 

To hand-pollinate, you pick a male flower, pick off the petals and turn it upside down onto the female.  Then you flick the pollen in.  Sounds kinky, doesn't it?? The pic on the right shows the male flower turned over on the female and I just leave it like that.  By tomorrow, I'll know if it took because it will start growing a baby gourd.  The flowers only bloom for one day so you have to jump on it unless you want to leave pollination to chance.  And if you don't have enough moths to do the work, then you have to pull out your breeders hat.

We're trying to get Jim sprung from the hospital tonight.  Still pumping Potassium into him right now.  Maybe a couple of units of blood before he leaves, too.

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