Yellow Crookneck Squash (bush variety) Question

I am growing a couple of yellow dropped squash plants that were planted from seed, I believe the seed brand was seeds of change. The plants are in a raised bed that is about 18 inches deep. The pictured plant started off growing much quicker than my other squash plants. I spotted the first tiny female bloom about 4 weeks ago. It has grown very slowly and is currently about 3 inches long, the largest squash in the pictures below. It has grown maybe an inch a week, if that. I check on it every day and it only had a very small flower on it that shriveled up. There have only been a few flowers that have opened up, I check every morning so that I can hand pollinate when the flowers open. It seems that a lot of the flowers don't mature and shrivel up before ever getting to mature size. There is also another small squash that looks like the flower fell off of, but there was never an open flower on it. This is also pictured below.

The plant is a bush type and is growing very compact. Almost all of the blooms have been buried pretty deep under the older large leaves. The plant is just now getting a lot of new growth on top with a couple of new female blooms, but are still very small. Do the fruit producing blooms on this type of squash produce large flowers that are the same size as the male flowers? Could this issue be because of the blooms being covered by all of the older growth? Maybe there was too much nitrogen and the plant was focusing on leave production? I am hoping that the new blooms will begin to produce fruit.

I have a couple of zucchini plants that are thriving in an adjacent bed with the same soil mix, which is watered the same. These were planted at the same time and I have been picking zucchini off of them for the past 2 weeks. The weather has been 75-85 over the past few weeks and just started warming up into the 90s this week. I have been feeding them with a water soluble fertilizer every couple of weeks. The package said to use every 7 days.

Let me know if you need any more information, and thank you in advance.

Have you done something to the color? If not, the plant is abnormally green. Squash, like brassicas and corn can uptake a lot of nitrogen but it will be at the expense of flowers and fruit. The zucchini may be handling the situation better. Good news is the squash will get rid of that excess nitrogen.

I have not done anything to the color in the photos. I will avoid giving any feedings for a few weeks and see what happens.

Looks like it might be mosaic virus. http://www.stclareseeds.com/gardendisease/mosaic-virus.html http://www.gardeningknowhow.com/edible/vegetables/squash/mosaic-on-squash.htm

I think you are right. I didn't pay close attention to the fruit. That is unfortunate.

So it is likely that the seeds I planted already carried this? I have two plants from the same seed pack that look the same. The two zucchini plants right next to these are both producing well and do not appear to be diseased. I'm not sure if I should expect these to become diseased in the near future or if those plants may be more resistant to the disease. If I get rid of the plants and any leaves in the soil, I should be able to plant a couple of disease free plants in the same soil? Thanks for the info.

Many of the newer varieties have some resistence to mosaic. It is possible that you have modern version of zucchini which is resistant. That is probably Cucumber mosaic virus which seems attracted to crooknecks and straightnecks. It can be carried on the seeds but is usually transmitted by aphids. Supersett is an example of a resistant crookneck. They still get the disease but are able to fight it off to an appreciable extent.