Was able to give it another try last night, since the summer zuchetta squash is so prolific, and I botched it again. Everything looked good this morning, no bugs got inside, however I managed to break off the female flower as I was retaping, after hand pollinating.............but I will persevere............not giving up till I succeed. I did manage to get a little further this time in the procedure. If anyone out there has any experience or helpful advice, it would greatly appreciated. the summer zuchetta are prolific & huge, so its a good one to practice on, but I would hate to waste some other fruits, such as my pumpkins or melons that are not as plentiful.

Well, I have persevered, and I finally had success with hand-pollinating.

I used painters tape, which seemed to be much more gentle on the flower then the regular masking tape, not tearing it apart, and I taped it up good, making sure no bugs could enter. I hand pollinated a ronde de nice squash, since the zuchetta was not flowering.

So now I am working on a musque de provence pumpkin, which I hand-pollinated this morning. All seemed to go well, but I won't know for a few days, if it was successfully pollinated. I'll just wait and see if it grows or aborts.

Hopefully this info will help some other novice. There doesn't seem to be too much of this going on here, which I will say I am a bit surprised. It is fun & interesting, so I would encourage all to give it a go.

But if anyone out there does have experinece, I do have a question about cucs & melons. The flowers are so small, is it difficult to hand pollinate? I have not attempted yet. I can't image being able to tape them up. I have since read somewhere about using pantyhose, which might help protect them. But how do you secure the ends? with tape as well? Maybe a rummber band, since the flowers are so small, I could probably easily wrap one around??