Planting "attractive" flowers could backfire, as the bees will only work the marigolds and ignore your zucchini that much more. I don't know if bees prefer marigolds or zucchini, though. A real-life example of this is that blueberry growers need to be really careful of dandelions growing in their row middles. Blueberries are "hard" flowers for bees to work...they're narrow and long, so bees have trouble getting the pollen, and would much rather work the dandelion in the row middle.

You can always get a paintbrush and move pollen around yourself..."play bee" if you will. You could even get yourself a pair of wings!

To get your fruits pollinated you need the pollinators and anything you do to attract them to the garden is good. Better than some Marigolds would be a wide variety of flowers in blossom with pollen to attract a wide variety of pollinators. When the bees go out to gather pollen they are not concerned about whether the pollen comes from a Marigold or a squash and they will visit both and even more plants in blossom until the pollen sacs are full. I have seen a bumblebee visit a Salvia, Phlox, Rose, squash family plant, and others before leaving to return to the hive.

finn you can easily polinate them yourself. all you need to do is remove the petals on a few of the male flowers and dab the pollen on the female flowers. the best time to do it is early morning. the female flowers are the ones with a swelling behind them, the others are male.

Squash are perhaps the most attractive blossom for pollinaters...period. If you have only 1 or 2 plants, you might not have both male and female blossoms on the same day at times.....3 or 4 plants increases your odds. Sometimes squash die early also.

How many plants are you talking here? If it's just a few, hand pollination is easy.I do it w/ my squash & cukes to ensure that EVERY female flower gets pollen.

I do it the way trancegemini suggests, plus I often break off the stamen & leave it in the center of the female pistil.

If you have a lot of plants, planting native wildflowers & flowering herbs will attract more pollinators than marigolds.I have both & they're constantly swarming w/ native bees, wasps & flies.

THanks for all the great suggestions. I have some petunias-- would a couple of those help? I don't have tons of room but I am hopefully going to have as many plants as I can, like 8 or so if they sprout.