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?

Hey Laura, I dont have a clue on how to make more buds, but you can hand pollinate the ones that appear assuring production. Take the center of the male flower (I am a regular gardener I do not know the scientific names)and insert it or rub it inside of the female bud. Both are usually bright yellow and fuzzy.I do this with my squash/pumkins/gourds.Its better than trustung the bees to do the work. FYI..My pumkins are not producing many fruit just yet. Squash and gourds are loaded......oh and learn about compost..

I don't know if it will work for you or not, but there were no usable male flowers open when my last female flower opened. I took one of the closed male flowers that were starting to "ripen" and getting ready to open and peeled the flower petals off of it. I rubbed it with my finger to be safe and some pollen came off even though it was not yet open. The best thing I can say to do if you're worried about it, is to just test it. Worse comes to worse you cut a male flower for nothing. Oh well, there will be more later. Or, if you don't want to do that, you can wait. Everyone else is right, there will be plenty of male and female flowers later. My watermelon plant did that. My female flowers opened first and started dying off. I know, it's odd and I couldn't figure out why. Anyways, the male flowers came a bit after that and I had lots of personal sized watermelon. Good luck to you and keep up hope!

Hello folks, I'm something of a connnoisseur of the Mock Oranges, n don't get on the site that often....anyhow, here's some things I've learned over the years from experience..... 1st off, many of the species available thru 'reputable' nurseries are not of pure strain (i.e. their integrity is 'shaded' or 'uncertain'). I have several forms, of which three I know are 'true blue' to their labeling. P. coronarius (and be careful with this one as well, see it in FULL flower to be sure, the flowers are white inside n out, n very fragrant if authentic, n old wood is chestnut brown outside) P. lemoinei X 'innocence' usually has some variagated leaves, is slower growing but flowers well n is perhaps one of the most fragrant mock orange scrubs I have....rivaling one of it's parents, P. coronarius for fragrance! Finally, there is P.lemoinei 'belle etoile' (Fr. Beautiful star) and this is a dependable bloomer has vigorous growth n has a purple splotch at the base of ea. flower, and is quite fragrant as well. I also have a form of P. lewisii from the N.W. U.S. that's in flower now, n is enchantingly fragrant. Hold it's flowers in panicles of a dozen or more at the end of ea. stem producing the flowers. This scrub was sold to me as cv. 'Goose Creek' but the description given now is of double flowers which the one I was sold was not! There are so many issues involved when dealing with retail growers that really have little or no knowledge of what their really obtaining and/or selling when it comes to this particular breed of scrubs!! Finally, I'd be dubibous, based on my own personal experience alone, from buying Mock orange scrubs from any retailer/wholesaler you don't have experience or knowledge of, 1st hand. Btw, I'd had the same problem with P.lemoinei 'virginal' from Wayside, and I wouldn't recommend buying ANY Mock orange 'Minnesota snowflake' scrubs, unless you see them in FULL flower.....I canned at least 6 scrubs I had bought yrs. ago, that failed to flower over many many years.... Brief, shop with much prudence!!