If it is blossom end rot, a good dose of calcium will help. Either buy a calcium supplement, or keep a few egg shells, break them up and let them set in a quart of water overnight, then water the gourds with this. Repeat every week for a few weeks or until you have each gourd and your tomatoes treated. The calcium will continue to break down from the egg shells.

Jan

this is the look of an unfertilized gourd biting the dust. How did you do your hand pollenation? Powdery Mildew will be much more noticable on the plants leaves than on the fruit. How do they look?

My guess is your plants are fine. It`s really early in the season, and unfortunately not all little gourds will grow up...

Thanks Jan.
Gourd Guy-Only one or two of the lower leaves are a bit yellow on my gourd plants. I did a search on the web after posting this and found that insects might be getting to the pollen before I do. I do have a lot of beatles on my gourd flowers. I'm don't know if they're Japanese beatles. They're yellow and black and elongated. I was pollinating by picking off male flowers and rubbing them on the female centers. The website I found info on said to shake the male flower stamens over the females and if there are too many insects getting to them, to cover the male flower heads before they open so I'll try that. I know not all the little ones will grow up to be "big ones". I was thinking that also until I lost about 6 gourds to one, with this problem.
By the way-these gourds were supposed to be apple gourds as that's what a trader sent me. I think there was a cross pollination in the trader's garden as this is what the healthy gourd I've got growing looks like-it's about 6" long right now:

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your apple gourds will take on a much nicer apple shape if they are grown on the ground and set upon their bottoms as soon as they reach the size of a softball. You can also set them upon a piece of wood/masonite, or even plastic to protect them.

Jan

Yellow and black and long means you have cucumber beetles, and they'll destroy your gourd plants in a heartbeat.

Your gourd rot IS due to unpollinated blooms. When you are hand pollinating, you need to do it after sundown (prefered) or very very early in the morning so you can catch the blooms as early as possible.. You do not have to wait until your male blooms before pollinating, you can pick off males right before opening and open them yourself and pollinate the female, once that is done, take a string, rubber band, or any other tie off and GENTLY tie the female blossom closed or you can lose your pollen, which may be the case here.

What you need to do is rid yourself of your cucumber beetles, there are two varieties, the spotted cucumber beetle and the stripped cucumber beetle. Thier names are self explanatory :)

Okay-thanks gourd guy. That's how I'll pollinate when I get more flowers. Also, I'll be on the lookout for the dang beatles and get rid of them with Sevin or something along those lines. Here's the dumb question-does a gourd plant only produce a certain number of flowers all together or will it continue producing the flowers as long as the weather is warm? After I lost 6 gourds on each plant due to my bad pollinating method, I cut the end off the main stems, like I read to do so that I'll get more female flowers and my plants seem have stalled while producing the new buds, I guess, as there's not much happening with them.

Any time I think that I may have shocked my plants, I fertilize with a healthy dose of 0-0-3 fertilizer (Dyna Gro's Pro Tekt is what I'm using now), then follow up with an 5-1-1 fish emulsion. I then keep a regular feeding regimen of the 0-0-3 fertilizer for hardier plants, and a good feeding of the emulsion every 3 weeks for steady growth.

I don't know if it applies to gourds, but I read where melon flower/fruit production expands directly in ratio to the number of square feet of leaf area. More leaves = more flowers = more fruit.

I suspect that your gourd plants will keep producing flowers as long as the plants are growing. Toward the end of the season, I realized that the youngest gourds were never going to mature, so I cut them off. I didn't have any info on doing that, but I figured that the plant might as well put its last energy into ripening the large gourds.

Just pay attention throughout the season and see what happens. Your local area is different from most other people's, and the more you understand it, the better stuff will grow for you.

Sue

Thanks GourdGuy and Sue-
I know when I grew luffas a couple years ago, I didn't have to hand pollinate, it all went smoothly without my intervention and the gourds kept producing until late in the season. This year I must have more insects at the pollen. I'm anxiously awaiting more flowers, meanwhile the 2 gourds I have are growing nicely and I've got a few other gourd plants started.
Robin