This time of year the squash is blooming away, but what if that’s all you get? What if all you see on the plant are blooms? The plant is perfectly healthy with no signs of any issues but still isn’t setting fruit. If you have blooms and no squash the answer may be as simple as the type of flowers on the plant!
Why Might Your Squash Plants Not Have Female Flowers Yet?
Squash blossoms are either male or female (monoecious). Often what blooms first are the male flowers. The female flowers typically form later. The female flowers have oval like shapes beneath the flower on the stem. These shapes are the ovaries and what eventually turns into the squash.
It makes sense when you think about it. The male flowers produce first to make sure pollen is available then the female flowers form. Sometimes though you can get a ton of male flowers with no female flowers and that can be frustrating when no squash forms.
How do you Encourage Female Flowers On a Plant?
You really can’t specifically target female flowers but you can pinch off most of the male flowers. By removing the male flowers you force the plant to make more flowers which increases your odds of getting female flowers. The male flowers you remove can be eaten in a salad or stuffed and fried up, indeed they are edible!
Also be sure to fertilize your squash plants with a balanced organic fertilizer. Fertilizer has three letters NPK (Nitrogen, Phosphorus, and Potassium). Use a fertilizer with a higher P and K than the N. Nitrogen promotes leaf growth and the other two elements are more important for flowering and the overall health of the plant.
How Can You Get The Right Flowers?
When you have blooms and no squash you have to patient. Generally squash plants will start to form the female flowers after the male flowers. I would advise you to plant at least two (or more) squash plants each time you plant, maybe even more which will increase the odds of having both types of squash flowers and give you better production overall. Also plant your squash successively so in the event you have an outbreak of vine borers you have a backup crop coming.
Eventually you may end up with more squash than you really want!
A Bounty of Purple Podded Pole Beans
Beans are simply the best vegetable in the garden. I know, all you people out there who hate eating your greens disagree, but really when you compare factors like the ease of growing, pests, and diseases beans really win out. In many cases beans will just continue to grow when other plants halt in the tracks due to dry weather…
Sweet Potatoes Eaten by Voles!
Wouldn’t you know it. I had big plans for those delicious garden grown sweet potatoes. Last year they were the best things ever. Candy from the ground and I had little reason to think I wouldn’t have more of the same delicious tubers again this year. I even saved a sweet potato from last year and sprouted this year’s starts…
Checking out My Vegetable Garden
Since we were gone for a few days one of the first things I did was check the vegetable garden’s progress. Things are shaping up even if it is a bit unkempt. The tomatoes need tied off again. I’m using bamboo stakes and twine to tie off the plants as they grow. I could easily have used store bought tomato…
How to Start a Fall Garden From Seeds in Raised Beds
Starting a fall garden is a great thing to do. Especially so when there is so much uncertainty in the world. A fall garden provides food security and is a great way to relieve stress! Fall gardens are not hard to get started but there are a few things you need to know in order to get one going successfully….
5 Reasons Why Growing Organically in the Home Garden is Better
By now you’ve probably heard about the study that says organically grown vegetables are not any healthier than their “conventionally” grown counterparts. If you haven’t I’ll sum it up in a nutshell. The study examined the nutrients and vitamins present in organic produce and compared it to conventionally grown vegetables and didn’t find a significant difference between the two. This might…
May 2020 Garden Tour from Growing The Home Garden
Every now and then it’s good to take an overall look around the garden and see how it is doing. Through modern technology we can record it all and one day go back to explore and see how things have changed. With that in mind here is a video of my garden as it appears at the very end of…
Discover more from Growing The Home Garden
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.