Hi! New to gardening this year, can someone tell me what I’m doing wrong with my zucchini plant? I get these big beautiful flowers that pop up, and nothing has happened. At all! They seem to shrivel up to nothing. Kind of bummed because when these flowers pop up, it appears to be thriving, but I also have no idea 🙂
Thank you for any help!!!!
by Educational_Sun_9220
10 Comments
Zucchini have both male and female flowers. You need both and it seems that the plant usually produces more males at.the beginning. Female flowers will have small fruits at the base of the flower.
Mine just took time before fruits came.
Nothing wrong! It takes time after the flowers open to get the zucchini growing. Mine are in this stage right now as well in PA. They’re supposed to close! They only open early morning and then close to protect energy. Try checking at like 6 or 7am if you can and if you see bees in the flowers that’s good! Otherwise look up how to hand pollinate, it’s super easy to once you figure out which ones are male vs female. The flowers will eventually fall off on their own when the fruit starts growing.
Zucchini’s (and all other related plants) have both male and female flowers, the female ones have a small zucchini at their base.
Most plants start with a ton of male flowers to attract pollinators, before they start producing female flowers. Yours are all males, so they bloom for a day or so and that’s it.
Edit: here’s a picture of one of mine showing the female flowers-to-be. They’ll come, just need a bit of patience
https://preview.redd.it/1103f6cuczdh1.jpeg?width=2296&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=d9dd28ab6644b9e6fb9d779f4df8efd024b00915
It’s not getting pollinated. I’m not familiar with which floers are female/male. Id suggest looking for an article on which are male, pick one of them and polinate the female flowers by hand. Or, wait 10 minutes for someone smarter than I to explain it. (There’s sooo many!) 😉
It looks like all flowers that have shrivelled up so far have been male (as they left a shrivelled stem behind), however you currently have a female and male flower open right now, so you could either hope that pollinators transfer pollen from male to female flower, you you could hand pollinate. If pollination is successful you should have a courgette of a decent size in 4-7 days.
I always hand pollinate every day, by taking a small paintbrush to scoop pollen from the centre of the male flower, then gently pat it all around the centre of the female flowers that are open. The pollen is quite large so it’s easy to see how much you’ve got on the brush. The female flower is quite sticky so you want to spread it all around, rather than all in one spot.
Zone 6b here and having the same experience. I’ve gotten a few females flowers and have tried hand-pollinating but no luck yet.
I added labels to this photo I took to help my kids identify, maybe it’s helpful. Good luck!
https://preview.redd.it/a9j0nl2eezdh1.jpeg?width=2252&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=322a334406e7afa41fecb989e663a88a98268d9f
So the male flowers come first to start attracting pollinators and then the females will have a small fruit at the base before the flower blooms. The male flowers will have longer skinny stems and the females will have shorter fat stems. Once the pollinators know there are flowers on that plant, they keep coming back and your fruit will be pollinated. It looked like most your flowers were male but I think I did see one female in there. Give it a little time and it will take off!
Zucchini are heavy feeders, it would benefit from some fertilizer applied every two weeks or so. But also, you just need to be patient.
**two weeks later **
Hey, what do I do with a zucchini the size of my lower arm?