How to Pollinate a Sugar Baby Watermelon

The Sugar Baby watermelon is a variety of small, early-ripening watermelon. It is an annual vining plant that is cold hardy in U.S. Department of Agriculture zones 3 through 9. Sugar Baby watermelons produce both male and female flowers, just like all other watermelon varieties. The pollen of these flowers is heavy and usually requires honeybees to transport it from flower to flower for pollination. If you are growing Sugar Baby watermelons indoors, in a greenhouse or under row covers, you will need to pollinate them yourself.

Garden shears

Instructions

- 1
  Go out to the Sugar Baby watermelon between 6 and 9 a.m. on the day you want to pollinate the plant. The flowers on the plant only remain open for one day, so you may have to check the plant each morning before you come on the day when many female flowers are open.
- 2
  Snip off a male flower with garden shears, leaving 2 inches of stem at the base of the flower. Unlike female flowers, male flowers do not have a swelling at their base. This swelling is an immature watermelon. Pull the petals off the male flower carefully so you do not disturb the pollen.
- 3
  Take the male flower to an open female flower. Brush the stamen, which is covered in pollen, along the middle of the female flower to transfer the pollen. Brush the middle of the flower 10 times.
- 4
  Repeat the process by cutting off another male flower for every female flower on the vine.

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