last year i grew atlantic giants. i only had room for one plant so i self pollinated the flowers. i grew a couple bigguns (550 and 460 lbs)so i saved the seeds for planting this year, but i'm not sure if the selfed seeds will be grow well or if they might grow wonky plants due to bad genetics. also i have a large peach tree on the south side of my house. the previous owners let it grow tall up along the house. i produce lots of peaches but is way to tall to be practical. is it okay to hack it down to a reasonable height. it has two lower branches at about 8-10 feet that i can leave on. thanks for any help on this
I don't know anything about pumpkins, but peaches don't mind heavy pruning. It's normal to prune them heavily every year. If you cut out a large portion of the tree, you can expect a lot of suckers during the growing season. These should be removed as soon as they are noticed. You can leave some of the new branches that sprout lower down to fill out the tree and keep it somewhat symmetrical.
Thanks vitog. It has seemed to produce a lot of suckers anyway so i am ready to deal with that. I'm going to cut most of it back and then maybe i can reach the fruit without risking my life.
Hi there. Chris from Toronto here. I am a second year giant pumpkin grower. My biggest last year was 1030lbs and my best this year was 1065 lbs grown off my 1030 seed. "Selfing" has produced mixed results in the last few year. The 1725Harp 2009 world record was selfed and had produced some large fruit in its first 2 years out. There are others like the 1610Lieber and 1197Matessa that have produced some sterile plants. Not all plants from that seed were sterile. Just a couple, but more than the average. When I say sterile, the female flowers look normal but the males do not have a stamen. Experience has proven that the females of that plant will "abort" after 10-20 days of being pollinated. This happened to me this year. I simply could not set a fruit on the one plant that was selfed. I only grow 4 plants and will avoid selfed genetics in the future. I also plan my crosses to have genetically distant parents.
Chris, the seeds you mentioned both have the 1161 Rodonis as the mother. After this year, it is clear the 1161 has some bad genes. Selfing will increase those problems, but didn't cause them. Just take a look at the 1810.5 Stevens. It had a very low seed count (19 viable seeds iirc) and a few grown this year were sterile and a few had very low seed counts. The 1810.5 Stevens was not a selfed 1161. I don't know how many 1810.5 Stevens were grown this season, but that is a very large percentage with genetics issues. I grew a plant this year, (1566 x 1161) that was sterile. Merrman go ahead and grow your seeds. My best pumpkin was selfed this year also and assuming there are seeds in it I will grow it. Good luck next season!
