A Gardeners Forum Forums General Discussion The Food Garden Forum Vegetable Gardening beautiful flowers, no squash

Whenever I plant squash/zuchini/pumpkins, I get beautiful plants and flowers but the flowers never turn into the veggies. I always purchase 2 to 3 plants from a good nursery so assume they can pollinate each other. My garden is a raised bed filled with cheap dirt and Miracle Gro dirt, with grass clippings and leaves added throughout the year. Lots of worms so I think the soil must be rich enough. Tomatoes, beans, lettuce, strawberries do well in these beds.

Your flowers are probably not getting pollinated so try doing it by hand. It worked for me when I had that same problem.

How do I hand pollinate? Also, sometimes a fruit will begin developing but then rots and falls off. Why and what can I do? My tomatoes bloom and produce lots of fruit, so why are they pollinated but not the pumpkins and squash?

Some tomatoes pollinate by themselves or by the wind. But with squash and zucchini you must have the bug or bees that will do the job for you. Here are some instructions that I googled for ... hope it helps you.




In order to hand-pollinate, you must be able to tell the difference between male and female flowers. Female flowers have a tiny squash right behind the flower (and if your pollination efforts are successful that tiny squash will develop into a squash rather than shriveling up). If you look inside the female flower you’ll also see a stigma, which is a sticky, round female reproductive organ. Male flowers have straight stems and anthers (the male reproductive organ), which look like small cotton swabs dipped in bright yellow pollen.



Squash flowers open up in the morning and stay open for one day. Hand pollination works best if you do it as soon as possible after the flowers open. To hand-pollinate, snip off a male flower and peel back its petals, leaving the pollen-covered anthers exposed. Nuzzle the anthers onto the stigma of a female flower, leaving a dose of pollen behind.



Discard the male flower after you’ve pollinated three female flowers. You’ll know your hand pollination worked if the little squash behind the female flower begins to grow and the female flower falls off.



To encourage more insect pollinators, plant flowers that produce lots of nectar, including sweet alyssum and bachelor buttons near your squash plants.

Went out several mornings to hand pollinate but found the honey bees doing the job for me.

It's tough when you plant things and they don't grow as they should. My garden is barely producing as it should, we're having way too many cool and cloudy days with lots of rain, though the rain is OK, but we need sunshine for things to grow well. My squash were doing OK, then we had hail and now they just starting to grow again, but I don't think I'll get anything from them this year, we often get an early frost at the end of August so that pretty well sums it up for me this year.

If you have tiny little squash (about the size of a marble) then they fall off, it may be because of fluctuating temperatures/rain.