I have started spraying my plant with a diluted milk spray yesterday, and guess what?! Today, I found a female blossom that is full-sized and about to open up, I would guess..... tomorrow! There is also another female flower forming in one of the new buds of growth that is looking pretty good now, too! Maybe touching the female flower blossoms cause them to die, as I touched all the others, except for this new one that I just found. Any thoughts? A few weeks ago, I also did work some crushed eggshells into the soil surrounding the plants. I bet that helped, too!

Here is a couple pictures i just took today of them, the longest one with a male flower in bloom on it seems to look healthy (although with this being my first time growing pumpkin i dont really know for sure), its the longest out of the three, and the other picture shows my two pumpkin vines that ive noticed are yellowing in the leaves, unfortunately i have them planted right next to eachother because i ran out of room in my garden to separate them and have a suitable place for the one i would move. They all had what looked like rot at the base stem of the vine, so i buried the part of the stem that had rot all the way up to where the rot ended and the healthy stem began, which seemed to help because they grew considerably right after i did that, but i dont know if maybe that could be to blame as well. This post was edited by MissKayle10-3-13 on Mon, Jun 23, 14 at 12:10

Hi again, its my first time growing pumpkins too and I'm really hoping to get it right so I understand your concern. I've done a ton of research and I'd love to help you if I can. As I said before, I would definitely get your vine back on the ground and be sure that it has contact with nice, healthy soil to reroot. I know watching the female flowers die off can be upsetting but often pumpkin growers pull off the female flowers until the vine is very sturdy and 8-10 feet long to ensure larger pumpkins so it might not be a bad thing (I used to hate watching my lemon tree drop fruit but really it is just the plant doing what it needs to do to produce great fruit!) Anyhow, would you mind telling me, how long are the vines on your pumpkin plants?

Hi all!! I'm new to growing gourds, and while I know this is a pumpkin thread, I have been looking for an answer to why my luffa vine's female flower's start out appearing healthy and happy, but soon turn yellow and never full mature. I'm wondering if the same explanation might apply to this branch of the gourd family as well. I've had some healthy female flowers, 7 to be exact, on a vine that is easily 30 feet long (with all of its branch offs). I'm very mindful of the females because I'm told that one healthy vine can support up to 30 good sized loofah (luffa) gourds. I currently have 5 growing, and I believe a 6th was successfully pollinated by hand as were the previous 5. I contacted the site owner of luffa.info and he suggested I might have a fungus issue, or the water here in West Palm isn't all that great, but I can't find a definitive answer, and this is the only vine I have and I was hoping for a healthy crop of loofahs for gifts, but unless I figure out the reason for poorly maturing females...there's no way I'm gonna see even half that amount. Do you think it could simply be a matter of the vine needing to grow more in order to support more fruits? I only ask because while it's still branching, the rapid growth I saw over the last few months has slowed dramatically, and the vine may be close to, or has already reached it's maximum size. As best I can tell the vine is very healthy, and has been lightly fertilized, and I was hoping someone that's an experienced gourd grower, if not loofah, might be willing to help a newbie gardener. Any thoughts or possibly pointing me in the right direction if this is the wrong area in the forum to be inquiring about loofahs, would be greatly appreciated!! Thanks! 40Acres