Squash flowers are truly beautiful. If I didn’t enjoy eating pumpkins and courgettes so much, I’d probably just grow these plants for their huge cheese-coloured flowers. This is a female flower on my ‘Delica’ pumpkin. How do I know it is a female flower? Because it has a little tummy.

This is the base of a female squash flower. It has a little tummy, better known as an immature fruit. Male flowers don’t have tummies (or anything else for that matter). You need to leave the male flowers in place until the females have been fertilised and the fruits have started swelling. Then the men are ready to be eaten in salads, fried or even stuffed.

If you’re trying to save your pumpkin seeds, you need to act fast as squash are pretty promiscuous. First, make sure you are growing a stable cultivar (OP or heirloom rather than F1 hybrid – have a look at this article), and then shove the male flower into the female flower (sorry, there’s no more delicate a way to describe it) as soon as it has opened. Once pollinated, tie the squash flower together at the petals to prevent any insects leaping in with pollen from another pumpkin.