HI Terry, Great picture! Thanks for adding it! Carving or pie? :-) I didn't get any pumpkin in yet, I may still try one or 2 of the 'baby boo' for the kids for Halloween. I know a few years ago my gourds were not doing well, and hand pollinating was a little confusing at first, so I hope these pictures help some who are new at it. JoJo

Sometimes they do that when they are just starting out, and it balances out later. Agreed. And in z8 should be balanced by now. Dan

I do have a pickling cucumber plant also that has only male flowers on it so far (it's still young) but it just didn't make sense to me that the first plant wouldn't produce any male flowers. I never heard of this happening and couldn't find anything on the web either. This plant with female flowers only is younger than the cucumber plant with just male flowers.

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.