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Vegetable Gardening

Cucumbers not producing

10 years ago

Hi all,

I'm very new to the gardening world- this is my first year trying to grow a vegetable garden. My question is regarding my cucumbers. I have two plants and both of them are growing really well. I have dozens and dozens of yellow flowers on each plant, but no cucumbers. Any idea what could be going wrong? It seems as if the flowers are drying up and no cucumbers are growing. :/

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Comments (6)

Donna
10 years ago
Do you see bees and bugs around your plants? They are very necessary for pollination to happen. No pollination, no fruit. Sometimes if a garden is new like yours, and there are no or few ornamental plants around, and/or your yard has been heavily sprayed with pesticides over time, it will take awhile for pollinators to find your plants. You could try putting pots of brightly colored flowers near your garden to attract pollinators' attention. Assuming you're not doing alot of spraying, it's just a matter of time until they find you.
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User
10 years ago
Are there any male flowers? A lot of posters here seem to have been growing gynoecious [all-female] cukes this year w/o realizing they need a pollinator.
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More than likely the developing small fruit are dropping prematurely for some reason. The most likely cause is heat or lack of moisture but there could be a fungal disease involved if you have adequate soil moisture. Look closely at the developing fruit to see if any part of the small fruits are brown in color or shriveled and see if they drop off when touched. Even without noticable bees you should still be having many flowers pollinated by sweat bees and other small insects. Production may take a little longer but if you are in the same drought as we are you need to water the plants or you won't get a decent crop.
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i'm in same zone as you, and wasn't getting any either, UNTIL, i started pruning them like tomato plants. first i pruned all leaves the first foot and half off of ground to get air flow...and i also pruned all the leaves that showed even the littlest yellow. then a week later..BOOM...all of a sudden, it seemed that all that once were flowers, had fruits, then a week after that, a TON. not kidding. now it seems i have more leaves than before, too, and had to prune a little today, and will do a ton tomorrow too. prune them. ive heard the plant thinks it needs to go to seed right away, after this happens. note however that i have approx 20 plants sharing the same trellis that is six feet long. they need air and space.
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uscjusto
10 years ago
Male or female flowers?
That detail is very important.
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springtogarden
10 years ago
I am having this problem too. I am thrown because I have another plot about 25 feet over and the pumpkins have pollinated fine without my help. Yet my cucumbers have not produced. I did one hand pollination but it aborted. I can't get there as much as I like to hand pollinate. There is a nice amount of bee activity so not sure as to why they are aborting. Have enough male and female flowers. Maybe it is too hot? 90s a lot.
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weluvbulldogs
Original Author
10 years ago
Thank you for the replies! I went out to the garden this morning to see if I could figure out how many male/female blooms I have. Of about 30ish blooms, I could only identify 3 females. I guess that could be my problem, huh? Any clue why there are so few females?
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User
10 years ago
Typically, some curcubits put out male flowers first, then start producing females. But it's too late in the year for that to be likely.
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