Starting Seeds

My Dad helped me build this seed starting station. It's set up in the school room right now and Caden(4) and Drake(3) helped me plant some water melon, cantaloupe, squash, zucchini and beans! We will be putting them out mid July. I used big pots because I want to end up with 3 plants per pot so I just started with bigger pots to save having to transplant them later:)

We also started our traditional seed bag so that we can observe the seeds sprouting before they come up from the soil!

Squash and Zuccini Polinating

I have an Awesome Zucchini plant(front) and a getting there squash plant(back).
I have had to keep the Zucchini trimmed back some to keep it in the 4 by 4 foot space I've given it and the squash got planted later but is also starting to fill it's 4 by 4 space. When I first started seeing flowers I knew that they were either male female but I couldn't tell until which until I finally noticed a female flower. On the inside there are five little fingers like the one below.

The male flower has one single one in the middle, like this.

Here are the 2 side by side. The slender stem is the male and the thick one is the female, and that's the zucchini forming.

This is a picture of the yellow crookneck squash and you can see the little squash at the base of the female flower(up front) and the male flower in the back.

To pollinate your flowers take a small soft paint brush to the center of the male flower and then lightly dust the pollen into the center of the female flower.

So far these plants are doing amazingly well and they are huge and beautiful! Not to mention the Zucchini is delicious;)