Dawn I KNEW you could tell me what is wrong. In all of my years of growing squash I have never had so many blooms on all my plants and only to get NOTHING. I know about lack of pollination in tomatoes but didn't think about that being the problem with the squash.

I guess I will be out in the garden tickling their little flowers with a brush until something happens to make them bear by themselves. lol

It was nice finally getting out to the lake. Our friends from Wichita Falls and also my sis and BIL were there. They didn't want us to leave but it was time to get home and get back to work. ugh. Besides it was already past filled for the upcoming weekend. It is going to get wild...lol.

Thanks for the help.
G.M.

Merry Heart,

I missed you all week and assumed you were at the lake. You had lovely, mild weather for it!

I am having more trouble than ever before with my plants too. Although we needed rain, and still need more rain, the continuously wet soil and foliage have created all sorts of issues in my garden. Some of my plants are finally showing new growth, but some of the tomatoes still aren't. Later in the week I may take out 30 or 40 poorly performing tomato plants and replace them with small ones I started from seed in late March. It is late to put tomatoes in the ground here, but the sick plants aren't doing anything at all, so I might as well take the chance.

Even my onion plants which were gorgeous are looking like crap now. My DH says we can add 6 or 8 inches of height to the raised beds in the fall/winter, and that will help. However, for this year, the wet clay has really done a number on lots of my stuff.

The fruit trees, though, are doing great. There are so many plums and peaches that the limbs are bending down to the ground, and you know that I have thinned them and thinned them and thinned them. While you were away I removed about 50% of the fruit still on the trees in an effort to prevent the limbs from breaking. The trees STILL are loaded with fruit too.

I know the lake gets crowded fast, and I like it better when it is less crowded too. It is nice to see lots of water in it again!

Dawn

Sorry for posting to an old thread but I was curious as to why the female flowers on my squash all appear brown and dead. Conversely, I haven't seen many male flowers. I found one today and manually made sure to pollinate the two female flowers I found open. If it is true that the females are only open for a day, then I suppose I have no concerns. Good information to know because I am weary of insect damage with squash, zucchini, and watermelon all in close quarters.

Normally the male blossoms appear first, and you often have several open male flowers per day for anywhere from several days to a couple of weeks before you start getting female flowers. I believe this occurs to ensure there will be plenty of males around and available to pollinate the female flowers when they appear. Every now and the you will see exactly the opposite with all female flowers first before the males start showing up. I don't know why it sometimes happens backwards that way, but I see it mentioned often enough here on GW to know that it does.

Normally, each female flower is only viable for a few hours (with some varieties, for as little as an hour) on the first day it blooms, and that means you may have to get out to the garden around sunrise to hand-pollinate very early while the flowers are at their best. Most male flowers only have viable pollen for a few hours that first day too, but some of them will have viable pollen for up to two days.

Squash plants seem to perform best in average weather conditions and often have trouble producing a good crop in very wet weather or extremely hot weather. I think in both cases, the excess moisture and/or excess heat impede the pollen in some way.

Assuming you are here in OK or in a nearby state, now that the rain is moving on elsewhere and we're about to get warmer and drier, maybe the flowers will start behaving more normally. By the way, one male blossom can pollinate many female blossoms, so all you need on any given day is one guy and he can pollinate a bunch of girls.

I grow tons of squash and melon varieties organically and never have an issue with insects harming the flowers enough to prevent good fruitset. About 97% of the insects found in any garden are more good than bad and will not do any significant damage that impacts your harvest in a negative way.

I am in PA and growing with a SFG method. Our weather has been wet but that was really before all the flowers started showing up. This is why I built a raised garden on top of clay. I would say this is one of those opposite situations with the flowers. I have noticed some males open but there are far more females and most are already through with business. Hopefully, a few were pollinated by the many insects in the garden if a male was available---I only grow organic. This is only my second year and the three types I mentioned are all my first time. If there is such a thing as a 'green thumb' I think I might be green. Thanks for the information! Much appreciated Dawn! Steve

Steve, You're welcome. My husband grew up in the Pittsburgh PA area, but has lived down south now for about 35 years.

We have clay soil too, and have built many raised beds over the years. You will never regret the raised beds. Normally we have far too little rainfall here, but this year we have had far too much with incredible flooding, and my raised beds saved my plants from drowning.

Since you're so far NE of us, I imagine your flowering season for the squash is just beginning, and I hope that you get a good crop. Often, the odd reverse flowering seems to occur in cooler, wetter weather earlier in the growing season and then goes away as warmer and drier weather sets in.

You do sound like you have a green thumb, and I'd like to point out that none of us were born with green thumbs, but the more we gardened, and the more we learned, and the more experience we gained, the greener our thumbs became.

I am probably 99% organic and have only sprayed by entire veggie garden one time with a synthetic insecticide, and that was last year in my 55th year of life on this planet, and about my 50th year of gardening. It saved my garden from being totally eaten to the ground by hordes of grasshoppers flying in from the surrounding fields in a very bad period of drought, but I hated doing it and I'm not sure I'd ever do it again. I don't even like using organic pesticides, particularly in the form of a spray. I don't mind the organic pesticides in a granular or pelleted form that must be eaten by the targeted insect, since beneficial insects usually aren't affected by those. Truthfully, though, I don't like to eat anything that's been sprayed with anything at all, so it is a rare occasion that I spray anything, even the organic stuff, in my garden.

Dawn

I live near a famous town known for a certain address given by Honest Abe. Great little town if you have never been. It is full of lots of motorcycles this week.

That is the one thing I noticed about the raised beds, specifically with a SFG mix. The soil stays moist but any excess water is removed before plants suffer. It has definitely been a wet year and the garden has been entirely unaffected in any negative way. The one exception is really tender/young plants or unsupported larger plants in strong winds.

I started gardening last year as a bit of a 'back to basics/make all my own food from scratch' so going organic was a given(hopefully, I'll be doing it 20+ years from now when I hit my fifties). I did try organic fertilizers last year but not this year. My only 'pesticides' have been beneficial insects and plants. Ironically, the only pests I have found this year are the ones that want to find me---ticks.

But organic produce is hard to come by and the variety is often lacking. Growing it myself means saving money, not having to drive all over to find other organic farmers, and I think it tastes better/is fresher meaning it also lasts longer once harvested/etc. It also means I can grow varieties I can't get in a store---like purple basil or baby doll watermelon I am trying this year---I can only imagine what my neighbors and any passersby think of my approximately 10 foot trellis 3/4 filled with plants. I know gardening is one gigantic learning experience but I had zero. I read up in late April 2014 and sort of went for it so to see things doing well makes me happy like a kid on Christmas morning. I managed a garden with insect and sun help and THAT came out of it? I admit I am easily entertained but it seems surreal---zucchini easily 2-3 times the size of a store bought organic zucchini? Even more surreal when I realize, aside from adding organic matter back to the bed at the start of the season, I haven't done any garden work. I did quite a bit last year but this year wanted to see the contrast. I just walk around the garden for a few minutes every day or two harvesting and that is it. Obviously, not having to break my back is nice but the garden is healthier too. :) Not exactly an outcome I was expecting. Nor was I expecting this...as a funny aside, as I was writing this, I received yet another request for my baking from a family member using produce from my garden! It adds to the surreal feelings. Maybe that thought of opening a restaurant focusing on organic ingredients is not so silly after all?

Steve