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Location

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Valley Falls, Kansas

I have my first female on, she is only about 3.5' out but this is my first year and I think I am going to let her go and see how she does, what I was wondering is typically how long does it take for the female flower to open? this baby pumpkin showed up on the 9th or 10th, and so far my weather has been perfect mid to upper 80's during the day and low to upper 60's at night. Thanks for the help everyone.
http://www.bigpumpkins.com/Diary/DiaryView.asp?season=2008&grower=45595&action=L

6/11/2008 9:05:13 AM

Valley Falls, Kansas

Nevermind I found a post from "pap" that answered my question, should have looked harder :)

6/11/2008 9:07:34 AM

Casa Grande, AZ

silentb- I found that most of the time the first female has always looked good but never opened up. Its kinda dissapointing but there are more to come.

6/11/2008 9:53:33 AM

Boise City, Oklahoma, USA

Or no matter how you guess they will open two days after any males you have! When you actually see the flower petals at the tip and they don't look soft and fuzzy but bright, bag her for the next day. You CAN put the male in the fridge for one day IF you catch him in the morning, pick the stem long. Then when ready to use, peel open and swish it around in there. And that's too close to the main unless you want to practice, and cut it off after 3-4 days after you see if it took or not. It'll put one farther out. Honest. Pretty soon that'll be all it wants to do, put out females and bloom males everywhere.

6/11/2008 11:28:11 AM

Garden State Pumpkins

Use it for practice in observing the flowers. It won't take ya long to be able to tell when the flower will open the next morning....practice with both the males and females if your gonna try to make selected crosses....nothing worse the tying up a female the nite before only to find all the opened males have been pilfered of all the pollen.

6/11/2008 11:39:18 AM

Valley Falls, Kansas

Thanks for the advice everyone, I am going to use this as as a kind of experiement/practice but if it does good I will just let it grow till I get something farther out, I have (7) plants that are doing pretty good I plan on letting (4) of them go crazy and only growing (1) on the other (3)

6/11/2008 12:35:40 PM