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Vegetable Gardening

Female Zucchini flowers opened first

16 years ago

I read on some forum that the male zucchini flowers usually open first. On my Burpee Fordhook Zucchini the female flowers opened first and didn't get pollenated. The female flowers are now closed up just when the first male flower opens up. Can I pry them open and try to pollenate them by hand or is it too late? If too late should I cut off the tiny half inch diameter unpollenated zukes and eat them that small as they won't get any bigger and will spoil if I leave them there?

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Comments (10)

mickee311
16 years ago
Mine did that too, earlier in the week....And it looked like no males would open in time to pollinate. I even went so far as to pry open an immature male to try to pollinate them lol....Dodn't work. But it wasn't a couple days later that the males were open and pollinated the females that still had their fllowers. I only lost a few zucchini to this problem. I've never had that happen, my males always open up first. I just pulled the unpollenated ones off when they started yellowing and I knew they wuldn't get bigger, I don't know what they would taste like.
lelia
16 years ago
One of my winter squashes put out a few females before the males, but now the males are popping open pretty steadily and seem to be getting the job done. I think sometimes little kinks like that work themselves out when the plant picks up steam and starts flowering more profusely.
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I have the same problem with my zucchinis -- the female flowers come on first with tiny zucchinis attached, but they never open and there are no male flowers. The plants are healthy (planted from seed from a local reputable seed company) and have no powdery mildew or insect damage that I can see. My question: Should I pinch off at least a few of the too many female flowers to lessen that stress on the plant to see if it might help more male flowers catch up? Also, I read somewhere that pinching out some of the outside stems that have no flowers, to sort of force new growth of stems that supposedly will tend to have the opposite gender of flowers. Any truth to this?
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That happened to me. While cucurbits are usually bred to have male flowers come out first (I'm assuming this attracts pollinators with the least expenditure of energy), I am told that for large scale farms, where I guess pollinators are used to coming, they are bred the opposite way. That's because they want their fruit fast, and if you have one male flower, you can do the job on many female flowers. So you may have gotten some of that latter variety.
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the flowers arenot geting pollinated i'd be thinking, you need male flowrs at the same time, do you have more than one plant? patience may be the answer? do you have plenty of bees around if not you may have to hand pollinate. len Here is a link that might be useful: lens garden page
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ruthieg__tx
16 years ago
I have one little female there all by herself...makes me sad to think that nothing is going to happen...there is a little squash as plain as day and not another blossom anywhere in sight...
nygardener
16 years ago
Same thing happened to me. The poor female is just folding up her tent and pining for the pollinator that never was. HÃ©las!
blanesgarden
16 years ago
Hey Californian! to answer your question..1.You wont need to pry them open, let em go.....

2.Those little unpollinated zukes arent worth wasting time on either, but I would cut them off the plant as they will start to rot anyway. Be patient, mine did the same thing for about a week or so, The males will arive soon and youll be givin that stuff away! Good Gardenen to Ya!
raisemybeds
16 years ago
Got the same situation here on my Burpee's Golden Zucchini. A certain amount of this "flower inequality" occurs each season. Not much you can do about it, the plant catches up with itself soon enough.
mickee311
16 years ago
Indeed. I just picked 2 yellow straightnecks and 2 zucchini this morning at about 5.5 inches on the squash and 6-7 inches for the zukes. They grew FAST! I just had the no male problem last week! They literally took off in a matter of days.
ruthieg__tx
16 years ago
One of my cantaloupes has seven...yes 7 male blooms this moment and not a female in sight....but I know it won't be long cause there are blooms in every direction on that plant...
californian
Original Author
16 years ago
I just checked and today it's just the opposite. I have about a dozen male flowers open and only two female flowers open. I cut a male flower off and cut away the petal part and used it to pollenate the two females. You can see the orange colored pollen laying in the bottom of the male flower. I did this two days ago and see one zuke about six inches long has formed already. I see many ants inside the flowers, what are they after, the pollen or the nectar? I also saw one lone bee go inside one of the flowers but it apparently died right before my eyes as it just sat there immobilized. I saw a dead bee inside one of my asian pear flowers a month or so ago too. I wonder whats killing them. I don't use any pesticides so it isn't me.
koreyk
16 years ago
Sounds scary to me. I would carefully take the bee and call the local agricultural dept or environmental dept and give them the bee. There must be something poisonous in the air. Not good for you to be breathing it. It probably causes cancer.

If I had dieing bees around here I would be upset and trying to find out what is wrong. Sounds serious to me.

Hopefully a good scientist can find out what is killing the bees. If you find out anything please let us know.

here is a scary report

http://www.fragmentsfromfloyd.com/2007/04/where-are-dead-bees.html

Here is a link that might be useful: Where are the Dead Bees?

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