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Pumpkins, Squash & Gourds garden

Is it normal for a month old pumpkin plant to not have female flowers?

Dora Nikolakopoulou

2 years ago

last modified: 2 years ago

Hi everyone. It is my first time growing a pumpkin plant. It's in a pot of 60 liters (so not that big but that was the best I could do). Now it's almost a month old. It has many many male flowers (not open yet) but not even one female. I am thinking maybe it's because I gave it a bit of nitrogen when I transplanted it but I followed the general directions. Is it normal that there are no female flowers yet? When should I expect that they appear (if at all). And if you have any general advice I'd love to read it

. Thanks in advance !

Featured Answer

gardengal48 (PNW Z8/9)

2 years ago

It's normal for any kind of squash plant to produce only male flowers initially.....and often at a high rate (10:1). Usually female flowers appear after a couple of weeks but high heat and humidity can delay that, as can too much nitrogen.

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Comments (6)

Dora Nikolakopoulou
Original Author
2 years ago
Thank you very much for the comment! I live in the Netherlands so usually we don't have extreme heat. Only this week it will reach 29 C (84 F). As for humidity, today for example we are supposed to have 37%. I thought about the nitrogen and it worries me a bit because I did give it around 25 gr of 14% nitrogen fertilizer spread over the whole pot when it was around 2 weeks old. I am not sure if that is considered excessive or not. I followed the directions to my knowledge. Not sure how to make it right if that was indeed too much! Currently also I think I have around 20 male flowers and no female, that's why I was kind of thinking about it.
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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.
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thanks iam3killerbs I was under the impression that what you said about A given amount of plant can only support a given amount of fruit at once could be a reason and maybe these basic JACK-O-LANTERN seeds have just gotten old since its from the same batch of seeds as last year . I have pretty good soil and its a sloped and long raised bed with the pumpkins and watermelons at the receiving end of all the nutrients of course the vines are growing outside of the garden with a clear grass path for them to go as far as they wish , the pumpkins are only a few feet from the roots so yeah they had a good start . very healthy looking garden this year infact everything and I mean everything is almost all harvested except for the remainder of lettuce we have been eating it like mad to keep up even gave some away and set up a stand in the front yard for the kids to sell , and this lettuce is just waiting for us to empty the garden except for the pumpkins and watermelon at the far end . I hope I get new females from the new laterals there is one tiny one but I'm afraid its going to just die off, we'll see over the next several days .I'm curious if there is a way to force a greater number of females ....it would be nice if one could just put a nice suit on the males with a cumberbun and unlimited spending gold credit card hanging out of the vest pocket to attract more females but unfortunately its pumpkins and not a fine dining restaurant.
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I ran into the same problem after my neighbour was bragging about my vines I have no idea if this helped but after feltilzing fairly heavily and days of non stop rain and watering (very dry climate) they produced 5 more females (3 vines)I am polinating everyday whether the flower is open or not lol one out of the five produced a flower and successfully its producing pumpkin . I'm still waiting on the remainder .
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Ok, I think I have identified the problem. Severe underwatering. This is my first year ever gardening anything and I read everywhere not to overwater, which I think caused me to underwater. I have probably been watering for about 10 seconds. This, as I've read, may cause a lack of female flowers. I will start water significantly more tomorrow (we just had a LOT of rain here in MA) and report back to help next year's new gardeners avoid this issue. Live and learn, as they say.
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tarakahle
2 years ago
Female flowers usually come later as the vines grow longer. They need to be visited by pollinators who visit the male flower first. I add sawdust to my dirt to help draw out too much nitrogen.
Dora Nikolakopoulou thanked tarakahle
Dora Nikolakopoulou
Original Author
2 years ago
Thanks so much for the answer. Yes the truth is that the vines are not very long yet. When I said flowers I meant the closed ones, not open. Currently I counted around 30 male not yet open flowers and no female ones. Maybe I have to be a bit patient :P Also thanks a lot about the idea of sawdust for nitrogen!!!!
Patti Chicago Zone 5b/6a
2 years ago
Be patient! I read that the male flowers always come first to let the bees know that the females will be around soon and to train the bees to make the plant part of their daily journeys. I grow the baby pumpkins and I stopped worrying about the flowers and just let them be. I hope you will be prepared to let that fine grow and grow. It is fun to grow the baby ones for my grand children and to decorate with them in Fall. Good luck to you!!
Dora Nikolakopoulou thanked Patti Chicago Zone 5b/6a
Dora Nikolakopoulou
Original Author
2 years ago

Yay!!The first female flower !!!!

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