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Vegetable Gardening

All male zucchini flowers?!?

15 years ago

Hi all. I've got a couple of zucchini plants which are doing well and flowering, but they are all male flowers! I've read here that it's not uncommon for the plant to put out male flowers first, but it's been at least a month since they started flowering, and I still don't have any female flowers.

What am I doing wrong? Is there anything I can do to help the plant along? This is my first year trying to grow zucchini, so sorry if this is a dumb question.

Thanks!

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Comments (4)

jimster
15 years ago
Inspect them frequently and be sure to peek under the leaves. A zucchini can grow from nothing to a baseball bat almost overnight it seems.

Yesterday I picked my first cucumber of the season. It was big, somewhat overqrown and despite visiting my garden daily, I had not noticed it.

Jim
new_2_nj
15 years ago
I'm having the exact same problem. The plants are huge and healthy with tons of male blossoms. I had one zucchini about two weeks ago and maybe two aborted ones, but others than that all males. What can I do?
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The plants are sensitive to stress. Any stress and sometimes it just won't allow reproduction. That would only give it more stress. Based on all the other posts you may be lucky to just have plants growing at all thanks to the heat. Are they heavily mulched to keep the roots cool? Have they been fed? Can they be shaded? Is it possible you are OVER-watering? Saved seed could easily have crossed but sterile seeds from cross-pollination would be unusual. Normally you get "something". Dave
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trsinc
15 years ago
Seems like I've seen this question pop up before. The threads I've read didn't really come up with an answer. I haven't used the search function for it, though.

I had the same problem this spring with my cucumber plants. I had 6 females early on (all were naturally pollinated) and then only males after that. And I checked them every day at least once, plus they were growing on a trellis - easier to see. Maybe it would have rectified itself but they soon were covered in some kind of bug so I yanked them. Actually, had hubby do it. I hate bugs.
careless
15 years ago
hummm, me too. I was patient for as long as I could be but after 2 months of only boy flowers, my 4 plants got ripped out this morning. Maybe next year.....

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