On Jul 5, 1:17*pm, Dan Musicant ) wrote:
I forgot to mention something concerning my problems getting early male
kabocha flowers. I developed a theory last summer that my kabochas were
refusing to turn out male flowers early (I believe I posted the problem
in this newsgroup a few years ago and people said it was not a problem
one would expect) because I had been in the habit of always planting
seeds from my own crops. I figured the plants were maybe (this is almost
hypothetical) trying in their own way to hold out for pollen from a
stand of squash other than my own in an attempt to escape the inbreeding
they had been subjected to for a few years.

Indulging this theory, I bought one decent sized kabocha from my local
market this last winter and dried the seeds from it and mixed them with
the others I planted early this March in hopes that at least the plants
from the store-bought kabocha would send out male flowers early. It
didn't seem to work.

Dan

Dan. If you planted seed from a storebought kabocha type. It could be
a cross with any other C. maxima, within a bees flight path. Unless
the planter had a pure field, expect cross pollinated squash. There
are a bout dozen different versions of kabocha.

The Tetsukabuta is a special interspecies cross by Sakata. The process
of making an interspecies cross is pretty complicated and patented. It
requires modification of the pollen from one species to be accepted by
the other. The result is considered to sterile, but I have not tried
it. As far as I know that is the only one available in the US although
Sakata has named several others.