squash help please

its seems to put out plenty of flowers and little bitty squashes but as they start to grow they dry up even though i water when my tomatoes and they look wilty.


its been pretty hot here lately but i am trying to keep them watered. i am giving like blood meal and miricle grow as its water soluble and wont hurt my kitties.

why arent i getting any decet squashes??

Maybe the flowers are not being pollinated. There are male and female flowers. The female ones have the itty bitty squashes underneath them and the male ones don't. A male flower has to be open at the same time as the female flower, and a bug has to visit the male flower, get the pollen (from the anthers) on it's feet or whatever, and then carry it to the female flower, where it gets deposited. The flowers are only open in the mornings usually. If the female flower doesn't get pollinated, the squash won't develop, and as you say, it will shrivel up and fall off. I do some pollinating by hand. You can look for a male flower, get some of its pollen on a q-tip or a small paintbrush, and then apply it to the male flower - the middle part where it is sticky (the stigma).
CMox
Edited to get my males and females right!

This message was edited Jun 15, 2006 2:50 PM

Usually if the vines are healthy, you are describing a pollination problem. I have carpenter bees and bumble bees that handle it for me. But if there are zero bees around that could be it. They will also abort under stress and in this area that comes from attacks of the dreaded vine borer. It is more work than I care to do, but you can hand pollinate by taking a cue tip/small brush and transferring pollen from the male flower to the female flower.

oh my hand pollinating. thats alot of work but will give iut a shot.

Actually the flowers with the little sqashes are the females, and they need to be pollinated by the males.

Oops, got it backwards. You'd think that as someone who writes patent applications on biotech plant inventions, I'd have that straight by now! Groan...I'm too focused on corn.