Flowers galore, Cantalopes Zilch

My cantalopes are spreading out like octopie? Plenty of flowers, alas, no melons. What can I do, or what did I do wrong, or is Mother Nature just perverse? Hopefully, I'm just impatient.

Join the club. Do you see any bees? If not, like down here in southern Florida, no pollination. No pollination, no fruit. You may have to hand pollinate the female flowers. I tried it and I still had incomplete pollination and the fruit aborted. Its very upsetting.

BocaBob

I'm with BocaBob. Are you seeing any bees?

I've read a metric ton of information about how the bee populations are dying out from Hive Collapse. If you live in an area that has few or no bees, it would definitely explain it.

First things first. Do you have female blossoms? If so and they are aborting, then you will have to resort to hand pollination. It is not unusual to have a profusion of male blossoms for a week or more before the first females show.

I don't see any bees, but we have plenty of wasps! Will they do? I'm not sure I can identify a female blossom, but I did read that there is a ball just before the blossom. I couldn't find any of those either. Hopefully, the female blossoms are still to come and maybe the bees are in hiding. If I have any success, I'll report later.

with the melons im growing, i noticed that the female flowers began to appear a little while after the males. i tried some hand pollination this morning, i guess ill see how it does.

When I hand pollinated mine, it seemed to work. The melons began to grow and looked great. Then they just stopped growing, shriveled up and rotted. I was told it was incomplete pollination. Here is a pic just before they died.. I hope you have better luck.

BocaBob

Bob:

Those look like cucumbers to me. Did your plants get cross-pollinated? Cantaloupe and Cukes will x-pollinate and be bad for the cantaloupe at least.

Relax, cantaloupes and cucumbers don't cross pollinate, with the exception of Armenian cucumbers which are really melons. Bob's photo is a cucumber, but he apparently had problem with both cukes and cantaloupes. Cantaloupes can be hand pollinated as you are only dealing with a half dozen or so per vine. Cukes are more hassle because there are so many of them. Where pollination is a problem, parthenocarpic cultivars save a lot of time and effort.

OOPPPPS!!! Wrong picture. Sorry. I am having real problems with my reg cukes too. Now I'm growing gyneocious(all female) plants, burpless hybrid (self pollinating)( no need for bees or me) The variety from Burpee is called Sweet Success and they really are a success.

BocaBob

Farmerdill - Is there a difference between parthenocarpic and gyneocious types?


Here is the pic of my beautiful watermellon before it aborted

wrong pic again, I give up on that one

All parthenocarpic cukes are gynoecious but not all gynoecious cukes are parthenocarpic. The parthenoccapic types (seedless) were originally developed for greenhouse production as they do not need pollination, in fact it is detrimental. Regular gynoecious types need a pollenizer interplanted with them.
http://www.uga.edu/vegetable/cucumber.html

Farmerdill - Why do you think I'm getting beautiful long cukes with only one of the gynoecious plants and no others?

Have no idea on that one, Bob.

I started this thread when my cantaloupe vines had plenty of flowers and no melons. It turned out I was a little impatient. I now am happy to report I have numerous melons starting to grow. Maybe some bees found their way to my garden. Thanks for all the advice, even for some of the more esoteric discussion.