- 39 minutes ago
A single morning of hand pollination can be the difference between a small pumpkin and a giant one. This gardening guide explains how pumpkins and squash really form at the flower, why seed choice matters, and how to start strong plants from seed without damaging the roots.
You’ll learn how to pick the plumpest seeds, wash and dry store-bought seeds properly, begin seedlings in free cardboard tube pots, and transplant them with the root ball intact. The advice also covers removing early flowers from young plants, watering deeply in hot weather, feeding with rich organic matter, and giving pumpkins the space they need to spread. For bigger fruit, the key lesson is simple: identify male and female flowers, then pollinate the female bloom by hand with pollen from several male flowers early in the morning.
The video also explains how to save male buds in the refrigerator for later pollination, why extra male flowers can be eaten, and how selecting one fruit lets the vine put more energy into producing a larger pumpkin. It’s practical, old-fashioned vegetable gardening with a focus on pumpkin growing, squash growing, transplanting seedlings, and fertilizing for a better harvest.
Created for viewers searching for pumpkin growing tips, hand pollination, how to grow giant pumpkins, squash garden advice, seed starting, transplanting seedlings, and organic vegetable gardening. Useful for backyard gardeners, raised bed growers, and anyone looking for a simple garden tutorial with clear, searchable growing advice.
You’ll learn how to pick the plumpest seeds, wash and dry store-bought seeds properly, begin seedlings in free cardboard tube pots, and transplant them with the root ball intact. The advice also covers removing early flowers from young plants, watering deeply in hot weather, feeding with rich organic matter, and giving pumpkins the space they need to spread. For bigger fruit, the key lesson is simple: identify male and female flowers, then pollinate the female bloom by hand with pollen from several male flowers early in the morning.
The video also explains how to save male buds in the refrigerator for later pollination, why extra male flowers can be eaten, and how selecting one fruit lets the vine put more energy into producing a larger pumpkin. It’s practical, old-fashioned vegetable gardening with a focus on pumpkin growing, squash growing, transplanting seedlings, and fertilizing for a better harvest.
Created for viewers searching for pumpkin growing tips, hand pollination, how to grow giant pumpkins, squash garden advice, seed starting, transplanting seedlings, and organic vegetable gardening. Useful for backyard gardeners, raised bed growers, and anyone looking for a simple garden tutorial with clear, searchable growing advice.
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LifestyleTranscript
00:00Here's a thing that will change how you grow pumpkins and squash forever, and hardly one
00:05gardener in a hundred knows it. The size of your pumpkin, whether it grows into a great heavy giant
00:11or a poor little runt, is decided in a single morning, in the few minutes when its flower is
00:17pollinated. Get that one moment right, do one simple thing at that flower, and you grow a pumpkin
00:23far bigger than you ever have. Get it wrong, or leave it to chance, and you get a small one,
00:29or none at all. Today I am going to show you that trick, the old pollination secret that grows a
00:35giant pumpkin, and the whole way of growing pumpkins and squash from seed besides. So keep up, for by
00:42the end you will grow the biggest pumpkins of your life from a single morning's work at the flower.
00:48I am Elias, and once you understand how a pumpkin is truly made, at the flower, you can grow them
00:54to
00:54a size that astonishes your neighbors, and I will show you how. So let me hand you the whole of
00:59it.
01:00Quick word before I go further. The old methods my family uses, there is more of it than fits in
01:06any
01:06one video. I gathered the whole of it into a book at EliasYoder.com. The book is the long version.
01:13If
01:13you want it, it is there. I will not mention it again. My grandfather grew a prize pumpkin near every
01:19fall,
01:20a great heavy thing the neighbors could scarce lift, and folk were sure he had some secret seed
01:25or feed. He would just laugh, for his secret was no seed and no feed at all, but that he
01:31went out of
01:32a morning with a brush and pollinated his chosen pumpkins himself, by hand, thick with pollen,
01:38while the neighbors left theirs to the bees. A pumpkin is made at the flower, Elias, not in the ground,
01:44he told me, and most folk never tend the flower at all. I never forgot it. So let me hand
01:50you what
01:50he knew. But let us start at the beginning, with the seed, for a big pumpkin starts with a good
01:55seed.
01:56And here is the first thing, that you can grow your pumpkins and squash and watermelons from the very
02:01seed inside the ones you buy at the store to eat, saving the seed you would have thrown out. Only
02:07when
02:08you pick your seed, choose well, for not every seed is equal. Look at your seeds, and you will see
02:14some are plump and fat and full, and some are thin and flat and finished. Take the plump full ones,
02:20always, for a fat full seed holds a strong, well-formed little plant inside, and a thin flat
02:27one, a weak poor one. So pick the fattest, fullest seeds for planting, and leave the thin ones. And if
02:34it is seed from a store fruit, a pumpkin, or a watermelon you cut open, wash it clean of all
02:39the pulp and
02:40juice first, and dry it, for pulp left on breeds the mold that rots the seed. Now to start them,
02:47and here is a fine, thrifty old way that costs you nothing and spares the plant's roots, the paper roll
02:53pot. You take the cardboard tubes from your used-up rolls of kitchen paper or toilet paper, cut the long
03:00ones in half, and there you have little pots, free, that were bound for the bin. You stand them up
03:06close
03:06together in a tray so they hold each other firm, fill them with soil, packing it in and down the
03:11sides too to hold the moisture, and sow one seed in each. And here is a fine point on sowing
03:17a pumpkin
03:18seed, that you nick the very tip of the hard seed just a little, and plant it thin edge down,
03:24pointed
03:24down, so the sprout comes up easy, and the seed leaves shed their shell clean. Push it down till it
03:30is covered, and water it well. Now the beauty of the paper roll pot is the same as the egg
03:36shell
03:36and the egg carton I have shown you, that when the little plant is ready, you plant the whole roll,
03:42cardboard and all, right into the ground, for the cardboard rots away, and the roots are never
03:47disturbed a bit. And this matters more with pumpkins and squash than near anything, for these are plants
03:54that hate their roots torn. They take transplanting hard and sulk, so planting the whole roll, roots
04:02undisturbed, is just what they want. And here is a bonus, the pumpkin will even root out of the buried
04:09cardboard and its buried stem. So bury the roll a touch deep and you gain extra roots besides. Water them
04:18well
04:18the night before you plant them out, so they go in hydrated, and set them where they have full, strong
04:24sun, and plenty of room to sprawl, for a pumpkin runs far. Now here comes the first bit of the
04:32flower
04:33wisdom, and it surprises folk, that when your young plant is small and first begins to flower, you pinch
04:40those first flowers off. For a small young plant that tries to flower and fruit too soon, spends its strength
04:48on those flowers when it ought to be building itself bigger, its leaves, and its vines, and its roots.
04:55So you pinch off those first early flowers while the plant is still small, and all that strength goes instead
05:03into growing the plant big and strong and well-leaved. And a big strong plant, a few weeks on, will
05:11bear you far
05:12more and bigger fruit than the little one that fruited too soon. Pinch the early flowers off a young
05:19plant, and let it grow strong first. Now you must understand the flowers themselves, for here is the
05:27whole secret, so heed close. A pumpkin or squash plant makes two kinds of flowers, the male and the female,
05:36and
05:37they are different, and you must tell them apart. The male flower sits on a plain, thin stem, and it
05:44makes
05:44the pollen. The female flower you know at once, for she has a tiny little pumpkin already formed, right
05:52behind her bloom, at her base, a little green baby fruit. And here is the thing, only the female makes
06:01a pumpkin, but she
06:02cannot do it alone. She must have the pollen carried from a male flower into her, or her little fruit
06:09will
06:09wither and drop and come to nothing. Now in the ordinary way the bees do this, carrying the pollen
06:17from the males to the females as they visit. And if you have bees aplenty, they may do it for
06:24you. But here is where you
06:26can do far better than the bees, and grow a giant. For here is the great secret, the trick that
06:33grows the
06:34big pumpkin, and it is this. You pollinate the female by hand, and you give her the pollen of not
06:41one male
06:42flower, but many. Let me tell you why this grows a bigger pumpkin, for it is a true and wonderful
06:49thing.
06:50Inside that little female fruit are many tiny eggs, the seeds to be, and here is the key. Each one
06:59of
06:59those eggs must be reached by its own grain of pollen to be set and grow, and every egg that
07:06is set and
07:07growing, the plant must then feed and build flesh around, growing more pumpkin to nourish it. So the more of
07:16those eggs you get pollinated and set, the more flesh the plant grows to feed them, and the bigger your
07:23pumpkin. And how do you set the most eggs? By flooding that female flower with the most pollen you can,
07:31so that no egg goes unreached. So you gather the pollen of several male flowers, not one, and carry it
07:39all to
07:40the one female, and dab it thick all over her center, so that every last egg in her is reached
07:47and set, and the
07:49plant then swells a great pumpkin to feed them all. One male's pollen might set half her eggs and grow
07:57a
07:57middling fruit, but the pollen of many males sets them all and grows a giant. So hand pollinate, and use
08:06the pollen of many
08:08males on the one female, for the more seeds set, the bigger the fruit. That is the whole secret.
08:16Now how you do it, plainly. Of a morning, early, when the flowers open, you pick several male flowers, those
08:25on the
08:25plain, thin stems, and strip their petals back to bear the pollen-covered center, or use a soft brush to
08:34gather their pollen.
08:35And you carry that pollen to the open female flowers, the ones with the little fruit behind them, and you
08:43dab
08:43and brush it thick and thorough all over the center of each female, giving her all the pollen of all
08:51those males.
08:52Do it early in the morning, for that is when the flowers are freshly open and willing. And the female
08:58is only open
08:59and able to be pollinated that one morning, so you must catch her that day. Early morning, many males to
09:08each female, thick and
09:10thorough. And two more turns to grow a true giant, if that is your aim. First, once you have pollinated
09:19a female well and see her
09:21little fruit take hold and begin to swell, you can pinch off the other young fruits and later flowers
09:27on that vine, so that the whole plant pours all of its strength into the one chosen pumpkin, instead of
09:35spreading
09:35it thin over many, and that one swells to a size a plant feeding a dozen never could. Fewer fruit
09:44and a giant.
09:47And second, you may mark the female you mean to pollinate the evening before, when her bud is about to
09:54open,
09:54and tie her shut with a bit of soft thread or slip a bag over her, so that no stray
10:00bee gets to her first
10:02with poor pollen in the early dawn, and you have her all to yourself to pollinate with your good gathered
10:09pollen
10:09come morning. Choose her, guard her, pollinate her thick, then let the vine feed her alone.
10:19Now here is a clever old fix for a trouble you may meet, that sometimes your female flowers open on
10:26a day when no male
10:27is open, or the other way about, and they miss each other, and this catches folk with only a few
10:33plants. Here is the fix.
10:36You save the pollen. When you see in the afternoon a male bud gone yellow at its tip, that is
10:44a bud that will
10:45open the very next morning. So you can pick that yellow-tipped male bud and keep it, standing it with
10:53its stem
10:53in a bit of damp cotton or paper in a covered jar in your icebox, and it will keep a
10:59few days. Then, when a female opens
11:03with no male about, you take your saved male from the icebox, let it warm to the room, and it
11:10opens and gives
11:11its pollen, and you pollinate your lone female with it. So save a male bud or two in the cold,
11:18and you are never caught
11:20with a female and no pollen. And here is a fine bonus of all these male flowers, for you have
11:27more males than you need,
11:29so do not waste them. Eat them. The male flowers of the pumpkin and squash are a fine old delicacy,
11:38tender
11:38and good, eaten fried or stuffed or in a dish. And since the males are only there for their pollen
11:46and bear no fruit,
11:47you can pick a good share of them for the table without costing yourself a single pumpkin. So gather your
11:55spare
11:55male flowers and eat them, a free extra crop off your pumpkin patch that most folk never know is there.
12:04Now a few plain words on the growing on, quick, so you have the whole. These are thirsty, hungry plants
12:12with great broad leaves,
12:15and those big leaves lose a lot of water in the heat, so water them well and steady, especially through
12:22the fierce midday heat, for a pumpkin plant wilting in the noon sun is losing its strength and its harvest,
12:30so keep it well watered. Feed it rich, for a pumpkin is a heavy feeder with plenty of compost and
12:38rotted manure.
12:39And as it grows, strip off the old lower leaves as they yellow and tire, keeping the base clean and
12:47airy,
12:48which heads off disease. And give it room, for most pumpkins and squash run and sprawl far and wide,
12:56so either give them the ground to run over, or train the vining kinds up a strong trellis and let
13:03the pumpkins hang.
13:04Though mind, there are bush and round kinds, too, that stay compact in a tidy clump and do not run,
13:13and those are the ones for a small garden or a pot.
13:17Now let me say a small, plain word, not a who-profits sermon, for a pumpkin is no one's scheme.
13:25But notice what grew the giant, a good fat seed from a store pumpkin you ate, a free paper roll
13:33pot,
13:34and a single morning's work with a brush at the flower, gathering the pollen of a few male flowers you
13:41had to spare.
13:42Not a bought feed, not a giant pumpkin fertilizer, not a thing of any cost,
13:48just the old knowing of how a pumpkin is truly made, at the flower.
13:54There is a whole trade in selling folk special feeds and boosters to grow a big pumpkin,
14:00when the real secret was always in the pollinating, thick and by hand, and free.
14:07So folk come to think a giant pumpkin is grown from a bottle when it is grown at the flower
14:14on a single morning.
14:15That old knowing of the flower is worth more than any booster.
14:21So there is the old way to grow a giant pumpkin, and squash and watermelon besides.
14:28Choose the fattest, fullest seeds, washed clean if from a store fruit.
14:34Start them in free paper roll pots and plant them whole, roots undisturbed, in full sun with room to run.
14:43Pinch the first flowers off a young plant to let it grow strong.
14:49Then know your males from your females, and here is the whole secret.
14:54Hand pollinate each female of a morning with the pollen of many males, thick and thorough,
15:02so every seed sets and the plant swells a great fruit to feed them all.
15:09Save a male bud in the cold if the flowers miss each other, and eat your spare males besides.
15:16Water them well in the heat, feed them rich, and give them room.
15:21Do these, and you will grow the biggest pumpkins of your life from a seed you would have thrown away,
15:28and a morning's work at the flower.
15:31Now I want to hear from you.
15:34Tell me down below whether you had ever known that hand pollinating with lots of pollen grows a bigger pumpkin,
15:42for that one astonishes near everyone, and whether you will try it this year.
15:48And tell me your county and what pumpkins or squash you grow, the great running giants or the tidy bush
15:56kinds,
15:56for both have their place. I read every one.
16:01Next time I want to show you the saving of your own pumpkin and squash seed from your best fruit,
16:08so that from one fine pumpkin you grow all next years for free,
16:14though I will warn you honestly of the one catch, that these cross so freely you may not get true
16:22seed unless you take pains,
16:24which I will show you how.
16:26The old people understood their plants deep, right down to the flower and the grain of pollen,
16:33and knew that a great harvest was made in the small, hidden workings most folk never see nor understand,
16:41and so grew giants where their neighbors grew runts, from the same seed and sun, by knowing alone.
16:51There is a quiet wisdom in that, in understanding a thing so well you can work its very making with
16:59your own hand of a morning.
17:01The people who built this country with their hands knew that, and we are only just starting to remember it.
17:09Let's go ahead.
17:09Mr.