One of my zucchini plants is about to bloom! That surprises me, since I didn't think they were big enough or old enough. They came up maybe 40 days ago.
When I went out there earlier, it was just a bud. By the time I got through with some transplanting and weeding, it had just barely started to open up. You could almost see it grow.
Now I just have to worry about preventing the critters from gobbling up my squash blossoms before I get zucchini out of them. Then I have to worry about whether they're being pollinated.
My big Maine Coon, Dusty, popped out the back door, so I picked him up and took him over to the veggie patch and set him down. But then he trotted off and wanted to explore the yard, so I ran after him and picked him up again. Then he started snarling, so I took him back inside. He has no microchip, and no collar as of last night, and I fear for his safety if he's outside, so I'm not going to let him run. I think he was snarling because he smelled critters, or maybe the neighbor cat. I may get a leash and harness and let him prowl the veggie patch once in a while. The critters may think twice if they smell big, grouchy male Maine Coon.
He doesn't have a collar anymore because he took it off last night, and I can't find it. Cocoa does that, too. Drives me nuts.
I gotta go check my squash blossom again!
A squash blossom!
Are they male or female blossoms? Maine Coon - LOVE THEM!
-Kim
I haven't turned it upside down to check yet. :-)
Dusty's hair is a beautiful silver grey in the daylight I noticed.
LOL - male - cheese stuffed blossoms with tomato sauce...
Is there a pic of Dusty on the Pet's Forum???
I've heard that squash blossoms can be good to eat.
Here's a picture of Dusty.
Oooo, I just want to scoop him and ruff him up!
Squash are differant than cats when you turn them over to check! Male stem below flower is straight. Female stem below blossem has a "lump". ;-)
Yes, I know. I was being silly. The female blossoms have to have room for the zucchini to develop.
This one's barely more than a bud, so it's hard to say.
How long do squash blossoms last? Last night it was a barely opening bud. This morning I peeked out the back door and it was a visible splash of yellow even from across the yard. Tonight I got home late and walked out to look at it. It wasn't munched, but it's already all wilted. Is my zucchini typical? Do they really last that short a time? I never got a chance to appreciate the open flower!
Yep, that is a typical zucchini or any other type of squash. If you want squash blossoms for dinner, you have to pick them in the morning and put the stems in water in the refrigerator until dinner time. But soon you will have more. They flower a lot. Did you plant just one squash or do you have more plants?
Oh, I have squash! The hills flowering contain 2-3 plants each. I have another hill probably several days behind the first, and Sunday I transplanted some that I put into peat pellets when I thought the other ones wouldn't survive. So that's 7 healthy squash, and 5 iffy ones. They're not very big, though. Barely larger than a houseplant. Yet they're blooming already. Huh.
Three blossoms so far. I peek out the window and see them in the morning, but don't have time to get the camera and take the picture. Then when I come home at night, they're already past their prime. They carpe diem, but only a single diem.
Too bad you're a little late for "Sneak a zucchini onto your neighbor's porch night" (annually on August 8).
Dave.
That's a good one, down here we hold that on July 8. :-)
When I was little, we used to celebrate May Day (Beltane) that way, but with flowers rather than zucchini.
I've had 4 or 5 blossoms so far, but they're always wilted by the time I get home. I have seen bees buzzing around them, though, so with luck they will be/have been pollinated.
When I was a child, on the first of May, we used to fill baskets with earth, moss, violets and whatever spring blossoms we could find in our yard and leave them on the doorstep of a few neighbors. My Mom told us it was an old May Day tradition. We even tried to do a Maypole but I don't recall it being very successful.
Sorry for the hijack, now back to squash blossoms and their results, squash.
Squash blossoms wilt in the afternoon of the day they open. Yours are behaving normally. They probably got pollinated. Most do. It won't help much though if they aren't female blossoms. The male blossoms just provide pollen. ( Or you can pick them early, put them in the fridge with their stems in water, and have them for dinner -- cooked in an omlet or stuffed with feta or goat cheese, or in a soup. They are quite yummy and only the female ones make squash.
Betty
With the number of buds ready to open, and the number of bees buzzing around (one tried to chase me away from her squash today), I think it's quite possible that I might get some zucchini this year. I've still got another month till frost.
Zucchini go from pollinated flower to harvest size in a week, so if you've a month until frost you should be able to harvest quite a few. You may be able to extend the season a little with a row cover at night, if the frost comes at night, but the days warm up.
I'd better look up some stuffed zucchini recipes now then!
Hm. Don't know what's happening or why, but my squash blossoms wilted and then turned brown and dried up. Male blossoms? Not fertilized? Too much heat/sun?
No zucchini? :-(
Could have been a male blosson. The female blossoms have a miniature squash shape at their base where they connect to the stem. The male squash blossoms look like a flower directly attached to the stem. My zucchini plants started out with only male blossoms for the first few weeks. Check the base of the blossoms. If they are all male, harvest a few, stuff them and fry them up. Yum.
If it's a female blossom that did not get fertilized, the fruit will look like it's starting to develop and then turn yellow and drop off.
How can i save male watermelon blooms for pollination?
I think, if I'm correct, that a couple of the newer blossoms are female. Where the flower petals end, it doesn't attach to the stem immediately. It's like it's attached to a little green bowl, which is attached to the stem. Is that clear? On some of the others, the petals were attached to the stem directly.
I have a lot of bees in my yard, and I know they've found the squash, so I think there's a good possibility of zucchini.
Yes, by now you probably do have zucchini. Once you see the little squash shape at the bottom of the bloom, you are close to having a zucchini. You can eat the male ones stuffed with goat cheese and feta then fried. Yum! But you must pick them before about noon and put them with their stems in water if you want to cook them for dinner. The bees and other insects usually find those huge orange flowers.
No, no zucchini yet. :-( The blossoms bloom (when my back is turned), then they whither, die, and turn brown. There are bunches of them. You'd think I'd get zucchini eventually.
And, speaking of blossoms, I still don't understand why my big, bushy potato plants haven't flowered yet.
Many potato cultivars never blossom and others sparingly.
Does it make any difference in the size and quality of the potatoes?
I got squash blossom pictures! I'll post them once I empty them into the computer.
No, the newer cultivars are bred to produce tubers, They only bloom to produce seed, and they have been weaned away from that.
Squash blossom!
It waited until I left for the dentist, then it bloomed. I guess it didn't realize I was going to be back so soon.
It may be my imagination, but these most recent squash blossoms look different. They have more of a bowl shape to them. Catches water very handily.
Farmerdill, my mom said she had heard that the potato will produce more tubers if we remove the blossoms. I was trying to find information on that online, and came across a page that said the plants didn't really put energy into producing tubers UNTIL they bloom. I'm sure variety has a lot to do with this particular cultivation practice. What has your experience been with blooming potatoes. Did you remover the blossoms?
So is it a boy or a girl?
Here's another angle.
You know, I've heard of squashes referred to as vines, but mine are more like zucchini bushes. And they're not as big as some I've seen.
White_hydrangea, I can't quite see the stem end of the blossom in your photo. If there is a bowl shape at the bottom of it, it is most likely a female blossom, finally!
This is my first experience growing potatoes since I was a wee little girl helping my grandmother, and I don't recall what she did about the blossoms.
They're certainly big and bushy, but then they only poked up above the soil about two months ago. Maybe they're not old enough.
Picture of veggie patch as of this morning.
Veggie garden as of July 3....
On July 15.
garden_mermaid - I don't interfere much with vegetable plants once they are up and going. I just let nature takes its course. The Irish potato cultivars that I grow routinely, Pontiac, Kennebec and Yukon Gold rarely ever bloom. If they do, I ignore them. Planted Peruvian Blue a few years back and they flowered and produced seed balls. Poor tuber production, but I doubt that removing the blossoms would have helped.
White_Hydrangea - If you have regular zucchini, the female flower will have a readily recognizable baby zucchini behind it. Unless you are growing a round zucchini it should not be describable as a bowl shape, club maybe. Here is a Grey zucchini with the flower ready to open.
Nope, I don't have anything remotely resembling that. Dang! No female flowers yet?
I begin to despair of ever stuffing a zucchini of my own.
Thanks Farmerdill! I'm going to leave my potato plants to run their course. I do note though, that they have started drinking a lot of water since they started blooming. I'm going to take this as a good sign that they need the water for tuber formation.
White_hydrangea, if you can't stuff the zucchini, stuff the blossom! These are delicious too.
I've been reading on the web about zucchini and their blossoms. Apparently all I've gotten so far has been male blossoms. But this isn't unusual. Often the first blossoms will only be male ones. Female flowers will follow after a week or two. By that time the bees have been harvesting pollen from the male ones all this time, so they know where they are.
I've seen bees at my squash blossoms, and I've no lack of honeybees, leafcutter bees, wasps, yellow jackets, hornets....
Anyway, once I get some female flowers, assuming I do, getting a stinging insect to cooperate in growing my harvest shouldn't be a problem.
All I can do is just wait and see, I guess.
I think I have a Brokeback Zucchini Patch in my back yard. All the flowers are boys as far as I can tell.
When I was (gently) moving the leaves around to get a shot of these guys, one spent bloom fell off. I thought they were supposed to stay with the zucchini.
You see what I mean about a little bowl shape beneath the blossom?
(Gee, I didn't know my hand looked so pudgy.)
