On our national gardening show (on ABC tv) Peter Cundall was talking about pumpkins, and said growers should not to be reluctant to pinch off the tips of long runners, this forces side runners to grow and it is these side runners that bear the female flowers. So you will have more pumpkins if you pinch off the tips of the main runners.
Anyone heard of this before?
Note: Americans would refer to these as "winter squash", I think.
g'day john,
yes i've heard pete say that on other occassions and also been told by other gardeners.
does it work?
well not for me least wise i did all that tip pruning and got hardly any fruit.
so now let them grow rampant, don't even do the hand pollination thing anymore and end up with more fruit than we can eat.
len
snipped
old trick, i do that all them time, it works
Yes, it is a practice which Peter has been advocating for many years. But the success of this lies in pinching runners only when they have reached a certain length - and I don't remember what this length should be (I have a feeling that it has to do with the runner having 3 side runners before you pinch it but I wouldn't quote me on this).
I think the same applies to cucumbers.
Cheers.
Sorry for the late reply but I thought it was worth sharing my experience.
We haven't done any pruning of our 6 (or so) cucumber plants, and we've been picking about half-a-dozen full sized cucumbers a week.
-- Ben Thomas Narre Warren South, Victoria
Heard it, but we've just let our vines run rampant and we now have Quite Enough pumpkins, thank you! We've got Galeax D'Eysines and what is probably Qld Blue. The GAleaux D'Eysines pumpkins start off the colour of butternut pumpkins, but are round like Qld Blues. As they get bigger, they develop hugely unattractive warts and bumps, like the pebbles of the Eysine Mountains, which is where the name comes from. Hideous, but apparently they taste good. We'll see!
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