flowers on squash females blooming, no males blooming yet

Have a quick question. I have two female flowers blooming, the first flowers of the season. There are many males flowers but they are not quite blooming yet. It might even be another 3-5 days or so....is that going to be too late for these two particular female flowers to get pollinated? I know there will be others, but would love to have squash as soon as possible.

Thanks, : )

Yes, they'll need to be flowering on the same day.

Bummer, that is what I thought. Thank you for the reply.

You can open up one of the male flowers...if it's mature enough and just happens to be closed -- then do the manual pollination of your female blossoms.

I thought about that but they don't look as mature. Plus checked them tonight and the female flowers are already closed, do they close for the night or closed and dead?

In my garden, the squash flowers open in the wee hours of daylight and are closed up well before noon, so I have to act early and fast if I want to try pollinating them.

Mine open before dawn and close mid-morning. I have to be out there early with a Q-Tip or Brush to hand pollinate mine.

Question, I have flowers from guords that are opening up when the squash open up and there are bees visiting both plants... Is that ok??

Provided you don't want to try to save the seeds MissJestr it will be fine.

Depends on the gourd, many of the small ornamental gourds are squash ( C. pepo),. The hard shell gourds used in crafts and as edibles are Lagenaria siceraria and will not cross with squash or provide pollen for their fertilization. These will have white blossoms.

My gourds flowers are yellow, I dont eat them, and I did not plant them, they grow wild out here.

here is a pix of them

How long does it take unpollinated flowers and the ovary part to fall off? (the part that would have been a squash falls off if it's unpollinated right?)

The unpollinated females usually shrivel up in a few days.
I just snip them off so they don't attract ants.

I took this photo today, it's been more than a few days....Unless a neighbor has a squash plant somewhere I don't know how it could have got pollinated. -I don't know of any neighbors with a garden btw.

Should I get excited if it hasn't shriveled by now? Maybe I should be asking "Whose your daddy?"

Forgot to add photo

ROTFL

Most of my plants seem to get pollinated by ants and butterflies or moths. I've seen a few bees in the veggie garden, but not many. Have tons of little bitty ants and lots of butterflies flitting around.

Stephanietx, I didn't have any male flowers on my plants blooming, I only had two females. The males still aren't open yet but getting ready too.
And if ants do some pollinating I should be ok as I have tons of ants. : ( They have taken up in my compast pile.

okieinalaska - I was watching the bumble bees over the weekend working the melons, and noticed they would push their way into the unopened flowers - from this I assume there is pollen available even when the flowers are not fully opened.

Hee HEEEE Well okie, did you find out who's the daddy??

Hey Stephanie.... I don't have any bees either....and my neighbor has a bee hive. Of course THEIR garden is doing wonderfully. The only squash that is doing the best is the 'Round Mexican Squash'. I've had to manually pollinate most of the plants I've got.

I've pretty much given up on hand pollinating and have decided to let nature, the bees, ants, and butterflies do their thing. We'll see what happens!

Nope, still don't know who the daddy is, LOL. But the squash seem to be doing fine. They look pretty much the same. I have to think they would have shriveled by now if they were going to...

how do I go about this hand pollinating thing, I have loads of squash but I don't see any squash yet, I have loads of flowers on the squash and 1 more question, how to tell male and female, I'm headed to my garden to look. Thanks for some new information, wow, just good to know things. Thanks everyone

All females will be sitting on defined baby squash. Males just have skinny stems.

You can take a small artist's paint brush and gather
the pollen, then brush it lightly on the inside of the female
blossom. It doesn't take much so whatever you transfer
will be fine

thanks for the info, I'll be out in my garden doing this, as I do have 1 nice size squash, and have seen others rot into black mush, I didn't realize why, this is my first time planting them, and I have several different kind in the garden, this one is an acorn squash, I think, as I just sometimes eating something throw the seed in and see what happens. the others i used seed from the packets. as soon as i download the recent pics I took I'll post a picture of the squash. Have a great !!

One of mine is going to shrivel up. I gave it a little squeeze and it's squishy. The one in my photo above though feels fine.

Earlier in the week I had another female flower and no males again. I tried to open a male to hand pollinate but it just wasn't ready yet.

: (

OK, here's the squash, and I guess I should have taken pictures of the flowers too, as i'm out there on the ground with a very small paint brush in the rain we had trying to pollinate plants, LOL, too funny, glad my hubby wasn't home to question as to what I was doing, as in maybe tryin gto paint the fruit on, hehehehe, too funny, but the truth is, I didn't know what I was doing, so I guess if I show pictures of what I think is a male, and what I think is a female, and than go from there, I may understand what it is supposed to be doing.Some of the flowers have a baby squash, very tiny, and I did see some flowers with the thin stem, no baby squash, I just want to make sure I have this correct. The plant I'm showing in the pic has some new 1" size squash starting so maybe it's the bird and the bee thing already happening, and won't need my help. Also can you do this with cucumbers, and any other veg plant, I understand some plants have too small of a blossom to try this with, but just wondering. OK, here's the picture, and a few others, of things I have taken off the plant already or still on, I pulled a nice size cucumber and never got a picture of it on the plant before i pulled it :( Till the next time, thanks for the help, Ciao, Jami

here's another picture of bush string beans

you'll laugh over this, before i thought about taking pictures, I already had pulled the fruit and here it is on a dish, LOL , this would be the first tomato, the first cucumber, the first radishes, and a banana pepper. I think there is some basil, and a hot pepper.

a closer look at the string beans

oh, I forgot, here is a picture of the 1"-2" baby squash, I have 2 of these starting.

yellow banana pepper, and this is the second one, I pulled the first a few days ago, and never got a picture of it.

a mixture of squash and cucumber vines, it's hard keeping them trained, and next year I'll know how to plant these buggers, this was a first, and it's hard to tell what's what, and I also have squash, the yellow long neck, and some green growing, that are going straight up ?? All of this is new to me, but I'm learning, and keeping everything healthy as I learn.

the hot peppers

And the last , some tomato's, and all of this being my first time. Sorry about getting away from the squash question, and high jacking this thread, I just got excited and love DG, so I'll go start my own first timer experience blog, maybe more in tune with what we're to do on here, I'm still learning and do go back and read the terms and rules quite often, I have to learn to tag, and than post in the correct forum, this way I can be in compliance with all of DG. Thanks everyone, this is the best site on the net for sure!!!!!! Ciao, jami

Hijacking happens often here - lol.

Nice job, Jami!

Kelly

That's alright. Great pictures! I am so jealouos of your harvest already. I only have a few green tomatos and one squash not ready to pick yet. Harvested only three small heads of broccoli and some lettuce.