I'm right there with you - my Burpee's butterbush started out with 4 female flowers and no males around to pollinate them! It broke my heart. I had some nearby acorn squash male blooms that I tried to pollinate with, but it didn't work. But within a week or so I had a couple male flowers with no females at the time! Argh. Within a couple weeks of those first females, I finally had males & females at the same time, and it's obvious that the two females were pollinated because the fruit started growing immediately - they were noticeably bigger by the next day! There are more coming up. What a soap opera in the garden!

I can relate. I have bees in my garden and my squash seems to not get pollenated if I don't do it. Just recently, there has been one of those massive black bees visiting my flowers and he strips all the pollen off fast. I have never seen him visit a female blossom though. I have to search around for a stamen he hasn't stripped to pollenate my squash. Hopefully, he will tell his buddies so there is more of a chance of things getting pollenated. I have many honey bees in the yard too but they mostly stay on the redapple and are not interested in the squash. Ania

Hi, I hope you all don't mind me jumping in with another cucumber question. This is my first time growing cucumbers and I thought that they would climb a tomato cage and grow up. But, this doesn't seem to be the case; the plants tend to sprawl across the ground. I planted them fairly close to other plants (there are some peppers on one side of the cukes and spinach on the other). The cucumbers are sending out long tendrils that try to grab anything it can reach. I have been removing them from the pepper plants when they try to take hold, and I have been letting them grab the spinach leaves, because it is my understanding that the spinach doesn't like our hot Florida weather, and I figure the spinach will have to be eventually cleared before summer (is that right?). So far the spinach is great! So, any suggestions on containing the cucumber plants? Should I just let them grow toward the spinach area in anticipation of that part being eventually clear? Is it harmful to the plant to break tendrils?

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??