Your plants look good and healthy so I really believe your problem is lack of pollination. Honeybees have been in dire straits with a disorder in recent years; however there are other pollinators around, just maybe not enough in your area. So you will have to help yourself. I think there is a thread on this forum relevant to pollinating, but in the meantime, touch a small paintbrush to the pollen in the male flower, and put some pollen on the pollen bearing place on the female flower. Shouldn't take long. Let us know.

Hi! Thanks so much! My DH just walked in from work (he works at FedEx loading the planes in the wee hours of the AM) and I read your post...neither of us have seen a whole lot of bees this year...maybe one or two only? So...once I have another cup of coffee, out I will go with the brush! Keep you posted!!!

Pam

Yes, try hand pollinating. First thing in the morning I completely remove the male flower, tear the petals back to reveal the stamens, and just poke that into the female blossoms' receptacles. The male flower only lasts a day anyway so it's no loss.
One other thing, from reading your post I'm not sure how long you're waiting before deciding the zuke won't grow. Just because the flower falls off doesn't mean the game is over. But if a couple days go by with no development, then I would assume they're going nowhere.

My problem is, the females dying before the flowers on them get big enough to even open and for me to hand pollinate ::

I didnt think I would happen this season, as I bought a variety that is supposed to set fruit even if pollinators are scarce.

If they are aborting BEFORE the female flowers opens, then the plant is under some kind of stress and is not ready to set zukes. Watch for aphids or other types of small sucking insects. Another possibilty is a nitrogen imbalance. You could add a high phosphate folia feed. If you have one of the parthenocarpic types like Surething or Partenon, pollination should not be a problem. Native bees do a much better job on a few plants than honeybees, who tend tend to work one type of flower at a time. It just might require patience, because the plants are not old enough. It is not unusual for the first few to abort.

I wanted to comment on the healthy looking plants - I wish my zucchini plant leaves looked that good.

Okay...so before the giant downpour today I pruned back some of the older leaves - the ones that have been around since DAY ONE (they were HUGE). I have to say that in doing so I noticed that my cukes, which are all wandering in this one bed, were getting yellowed leaves and the stems of the leaves were getting "yucky" for a lack of better words - mushy - and the initial cukes that were trying to form were also mushy. So...maybe it was too wet and no sun or ventilation?

The flowers on the zucchini are opening, and are hanging out for a while, until the zukes get to about 4" in length (not thick though, maybe 1" in diameter or less) and then the flower gets mushy, sags, and then falls off. I do leave the zukes there for about 24-48 hours, and when the tip where the flower was starts to turn yellow, I clip them as that means they are going bad (mushy). I salvage as many of the little guys as I can - as a matter of fact just sauted a bunch of them with some onions and had them for dinner - so they are very tasty, just very small. I think I salvaged about 7 today...no flowers, starting to turn yellowish on the ends. So...I think I am waiting long enough to see if they keep developing...right?

I have a couple of larger zukes out there, so I am now keeping an eye on them. I did not get to pollinating today because I was so busy cutting the overgrown leaves out. I have left many leaves, but the ones on the lower levels are removed so hopefully the ventilation will increase and maybe dry out a bit.

I did see many worms - they always startle me, but I was really pleased to see them since these are new beds! - and many cukes coming up that are not mushy. :o)

As for nitrogen...I did the beds as lasagna beds and am not adding chemicals. I did add UCGs, but could not do as much as I had wanted a few weeks ago because of the leaf issue! Now that I can get to them, I will add more - this should fix any nitrogen imbalance, correct? I also bury veggie cuttings and eggshells out of the kitchen periodically...I bury around the plants, not too close to disturb the roots. Now, again, since I can GET to the ground (haha) I will be able to do more of that around the zukes and cukes.

Is there anything else you guys think I should be doing? DH plays guitar for them (well, he plays guitar outside on the deck and it's near the plants, so...there you go!), we water pretty regularly since the rain has been rare around here (except for this week!). Again, I did check while I was digging around the plants today and nothing was on the stems, under the leaves, or on the leaves....saw a lot of ants, though, but no weird looking bugs that could be sucking the life out of my cukes.

Pam, I check my garden first thing every morning. One of the things I check each day are my zucchini. I had been having the same problem as you, but then started hand pollinating with a child's paint brush the way others have mentioned here. (Also see the Pumpkin, Squash, and Gourd forum for more discussion of hand pollination.) Anyway, when I started hand pollinating, I noticed within one day an increase in size of the zucchini. Suddenly they started getting larger. Once pollination happens, I don't think the blossom really makes much difference. Sometimes it falls off, sometimes it doesn't. But in my experience, you should know within a day (definitely within two) whether the pollination took. I let my zucchini keep going for several more days until it gets the size I want and then I pick it. But I check back each day anyway to see if there are any new babies that need to be pollinated. Once I started this cycle, I have been harvesting a zucchini a day. I now have 4 large zucchini sitting on my kitchen counter and I'm starting to wonder what to do with them all! Good luck!

I check every morning as well...have been a bit lax the last week since DH started this new job (the timing just sucks...but it's a good job). I am armed with my cup of coffee and my paintbrush and heading out now. :o)

You guys are awesome and such a great wealth of information! If it wasn't for this forum, I would not have a garden!

Thanks again!

Pam

I have the same problem that Pam describes. I started hand pollinating 2 days ago and can already see some of the zukes developing into full size. Thanks for the advice.
John A

I don't have pollination problems in my garden; but I interplanted with lavender, California poppies, marigolds, zinnias, etc. I saved some seeds from last year's zucchini....they are producing big viable plants growing nice long squash fruits that are delicious and....light green.

So my pollinators happily took yellow squash pollen across the garden to the zucchini plants. The result is still a great squash so I'm happily going to keep using the large bag of seeds I gathered last year. Of the 12 or so plants two are producing regular green zucchini and the others are producing my green-gold zucchini's.

So here's a picture of my green-gold zucchinis beside a regular green zucchini. They were all grown from seed I saved from one of last year's zucchinis.

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Good morning!

It's been a few days...we've survived the onslaught of teenagers...and YES my zukes are definitely getting bigger!

Thanks so much for the great advice! It worked!

Another question though...do I have to do the same with cukes?

Thanks guys!

Pam

Aha! I am so happy to find this topic! I think I have the same problem. This is the 1st time I ever grew zucchini so I didn't know when to harvest them. The first fruits that grew never got big, they stayed only a couple inches long. And I left them on the plant for weeks, wondering if they would ever get bigger.

In the meantime just a week or two ago, a couple bigger ones finally grew much faster. So I knew something must be wrong with the old tiny ones and finally cut them all off last night. They were already kinda mushy. Now I realize they probably never got pollinated!

I just recently planted a bunch of marigolds so maybe that attracted more bees to the garden, and now this is why I got some big ones. In any case, now I know to watch out and perhaps hand pollinate in the morning. Thanks all!!

The whole pollination issue was my problem...since going out and goosing the flowers (oh...there are many more jokes about the whole hand pollinating thing going on amongst my neighbors and my husband!) I have harvested 3 very large zukes and there are more growing.

Pam

Pam, I am a new member following this thread- what ended up happening with your zucchini's? Did they make your kids as sick and tired of zukes as you were (and I was) as a kid?

My dad used to leave them on the vine when we had too many in the house- which was all summer- and we always had the gigantic ones left to make zucchini bread with...:)