My first year growing pumpkins too, so I'm no expert, but here's my 2 cents: 1 of my plants (Spookies variety) started producing fruit quickly, but the others lagged behind... lots of male flowers but no females... or female buds would form, then die and fall off without opening. But eventually these plants came through also, and now all of my 7 plants are producing at least one or two pumpkins. I think it has a lot to do with the overall health and vigor of the plant... I think the plant "knows" if it's strong enough to support fruit, and the females don't come until it's ready. So just keep your plants healthy, and they will come. I also think it has to do with the amount of sun. We've had warm weather and tons of rain here in the Carolinas. My plants seemed for the most part healthy and strong, but most days were more cloudy than sunny. When the sun shined strong for a couple days, that's when my females stopped dying and started producing.

It's normal for males to dominate before females start to bloom. Even then you will see pretty much one female to every ten males. To the poster who thinks his male flowers are dying off: all pumpkin flowers bloom for only a few hours every morning before they die off. As for not cutting the male flowers, I disagree. I've been growing pumpkins going on ten years now and if there are no female flowers to pollinate, then I will cut the male flowers just before they start to shrivel. I've yet to get a diseased plant doing this. I cut the male flowers because they are delicious to eat. So if you don't get pumpkins, you can enjoy cooking and eating the male flowers throughout the growing season. I cut off the stem, gently rinse them under cold water and saute them after dredging through a thin whole-wheat pancake batter - yum! BTW. I should mention that pumpkins are very difficult to hand pollinate. You'r e better off putting out bee loving flowers early in the season in order to get your location established on the honey bees routes. Ants do a pretty good job also, so if you see ants around your pumpkin vines, then do not try to exterminate them. If you do want to hand pollinate, then use a very soft artists brush and lightly stroke the pistol of a male plant (you should not see tons of pollen - in this case a little is too much), then lightly stroke the stamen of the female plant (again a little is too much). Even then you are not likely to succeed with hand pollination.

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!

it's likely temperature or nutrient/fertilizer related.. the plant may also abort them if it already has several fruits established. I like think of it as the plant having a finite carrying capacity for reproduction.. if it's already carrying several fruit that load capability can be maxed out depending on the plant's environmental conditions. Likewise, if the environment changes radically (the temperatures shoot up or down, or nutrient levels drop) then the carrying capacity is reduced and it is forced to abort to maintain the core system. I have no idea if that's accurate but being an engineer it helps me wrap my brain around it.