Zucchini and crook neck squash have tons of male flowers

My zucchini and crook neck squash have tons of male flowers and hardly any female fruit flowers.....what the heck is that about? From what I was told it would have been the other way around.

As for this one: per my conversation with the local nursery. It is common to get a ton of male flowers first and the the females will start coming in prolifically. But since they are a hungry plant it is a good idea to fertilize them with the masters bloom liquid as well every two weeks.

janet214 - all those male blossoms will attract bees. This is necessary so bees are present when the female blooms appear. The blossoms are only open for a short period each day.

How do you know they are male? Is it the same for melons?

sweetie77 - Yes. If you know how to tell females from males on melons, you can use the same info for squash and cucumbers.

Hmm... I just re-read your questions. Perhaps you are trying to tell which are male and which are female blossoms on both squash and melons?

In case you are; (and for those reading this who would like to know.)

A female squash, melon, or cucumber flower has a little bump behind it. The male flowers just have a plain stalk. You could think of the female flowers as looking a "little pregnant." ^_^

If you don't have bees, you can pollinate these flowers by using a make-up brush to transfer the pollen from male to female blooms. I've never done this, although I have used this method to pollinate day lilies.

Sometimes the young fruit turn yellow, die, and fall off. I don't know why this happens, but assume it's caused by lack of pollination, wet weather, too humid, to dry, or too something!

HoneybeeNC is right about the difference on the flowers....I just wanted to add that I used a q-tip to pollenate my squash and it worked well. The bee's seemed to be busy with ornamental flowers and I had to help them out lol.

Cool! I'm gonna go look for the difference now!

I have read about Sultan zucchini seeds. These seeds are supposed to be self pollinating. I have looked every where and can't find these seeds. Does anyone know where I can find/order them? Thanks so much.

The Sultan I know is a cucumber :http://www.johnnyseeds.com/p-7749-sultan-f1.aspx

Partenon is a parthenocarpic zucchini (=it will set fruit without being pollinated). i have trued and last year did very well before the SVB came to visit !
http://www.johnnyseeds.com/p-8311-partenon-f1-og.aspx

drthor-thanks so much. I will order some of these seeds and give them a try.