5 Reasons Your Squash Plants Are Only Producing Male Flowers

what is going on everyone welcome to another very exciting episode right here on the my gardener channel in today's episode we're out in the garden today it's a little bit late sun setting but we had to wait for some rain to get out of the get out of the way first because my camera's not waterproof but we're out here nonetheless and we're gonna get this video done so you guys can grow bigger go home with it but what we're talking about today is what to do if your plants are only producing female flowers your squash plants your cucumber plants your pumpkin plants zucchini plants all the cucurbita crops produce both male and female flowers on the same plant the flowers are not self-fertile and that means they're not like a tomato plant or a pepper plant where the flowers a single flower contains both male and female components there's actually the plant itself can set fruit the plant is self-fertile but the flowers are not self-fertile the plant produces both male and female components on different parts of the plant different flowers contain different sex organs and so a lot of times gardeners find that a squash plant will start to produce only male flowers and obviously if you only get male flowers you're not going to get any fruit this can be very concerning on the flip side they can also produce only female flowers and no male flowers and that can be concerning and so the first thing that i want to start off with is that there's never a reason to be concerned in the garden everything typically has a fix and there's no need to pull out your plants there's no need to you know panic and get stressed your garden is very young it's just starting out if this problem was say three or four months down the road and you know the gardening season was in full swing and these plants were three feet wide that might be a different cause for concern and we will also talk about that in this episode but if your plants are young and they're just starting out the first reason why your plants are typically producing only one type of flower is because they're just kind of growing into maturity they haven't yet had enough time to produce both male and female flowers and certain plants you know you might get lucky and you might get a plant that produces both male and female flowers right off the bat and that's great that's fantastic but even in my experience i would say about 75 of the time the first month or two the plants will either produce all males or all females and all the flowers that form or all the fruits that form will both fall off in both cases because there's not enough flowers in the area you know other squash plants or other cucumber plants other pumpkin plants they're not flowering there's enough there's not enough flowers for them to cross pollinate and fix the problem so they generally will fall off so if i lose all my fruits within the first month hey i've lost all my fruits within the first month and that's fine and that happens about 75 of the time but am i concerned no because i realize that this is a temporary problem and it will fix itself now if you have you know you've waited one or two months your plants are still only producing male and female flowers what could be the cause the first reason is because of stress so if your conditions are very hot or very cold this can dramatically reduce the amount of male or female flowers being produced in the case of most plants if the temperatures are very hot they will not produce female flowers and the reason why is because female flowers have a fruit attached to them it takes way more energy and way more nutrients and water to sustain that fruit than it does to produce a male flower so in temperatures that are above 85 to 90 degrees you'll typically find that most squash plants will just produce male flowers they will still produce flowers but they're just not female flowers and that's because the plant doesn't want to stress itself to death if the plant were to produce a lot of female flowers it might not be able to survive and so it's kind of just a built-in safety mechanism or a survival mechanism you could say to allowing the plant to survive so don't panic if it's hot that's typically why the second reason why it could be producing just male flowers is because of nutrients so a lot of times if your plant is beautiful it's super super green what can happen is you have too much nitrogen you see the plant's natural intended purpose is to reproduce its biological goal and objective is to produce offspring and the offspring are formed in seeds found in fruit and if the plant is very healthy it basically says to itself why would i need to reproduce i'd rather just grow plants are very advantageous and they're a little bit selfish and so if you give them a reason to just grow and not produce fruit and you just pump them full of nitrogen which is you know meant to enhance leafy green growth enhance the overall plant health and vigor it's not really encouraged to set fruit and so if you find that's the case your plants are huge but they're not setting any fruit simply simply kind of just dial back the nitrogen if you're fertilizing regularly or switch it up to more of like a phosphorus based or a potassium-based fertilizer to kind of encourage some of that fruiting and flower set because that could definitely encourage some of the more the the female flowers to form because that way it's actually saying all right i'm done growing i'm ready to you know i'm ready to to carry on my genetic material in the form of fruits i'm going to start setting fruits and you see this not just with squash but you also see this with things like beans i mean see what happens when you only pump nitrogen into a bean plant it's going to be giant you're going to get very little fruits i mean look at what happens when you fertilize you know any any plant tomatoes peppers no exception give them just nitrogen they're going to be tons of green growth but very little fruit so it's not only exclusive to just squash plants but nitrogen can definitely play a big role into why you're not getting any fruit quick little pea break not that kind of pee don't be weird another reason why your plants might only be producing male flowers is because they're too dry like we talked about when the weather's too hot and the plants are trying to conserve energy if your plants are too dry the same exact thing is going to happen they're kind of going to shut down because it takes so much water to produce a fruit but not as much water to produce male flowers and you see a plant no matter what it's its goal is to produce some type of reproductive organ and so the plant itself it's going to produce male flowers because it's going to say okay just because i can't produce a female flower doesn't mean that there's not another female flower that needs to be pollinated in the area and so it will by nature always kind of set out a flower because it has a better chance of cross pollinating with something else and you know still still trying to achieve an objective of cross-pollination but the plant itself might have an issue if it's very dry because it basically will say i can't put out a female flower i'm too dry it's not i'm not able to to really sacrifice that and i don't want to risk dying so i'm not going to produce a female fruit and so it just won't and so make sure that you're watering on a consistent basis plants that take up lots of water plants like you know tomatoes zucchinis pumpkins your big fruiting plants you have to remember watermelons cucumbers even things like that they are 95 water those fruits two pounds three pounds zucchinis can get five to eight pounds those fruits are massive and that weight is about ninety five percent water weight so you may you need to make sure that you're giving your plants lots of water because that water doesn't just come from thin air it doesn't just come from nowhere it either has to come in the form of rain or you watering so that that plant can actually produce fruit otherwise it's simply going to drop it off so that's another very common reason is when it's hot it's dry it's either too hot or it's too dry or it's sometimes both and the plant just cannot risk putting out a female flower so it just produces male flowers and the final reason why your plant might not be producing any flowers is because of pests this is something that you know can happen doesn't happen all the time but you want to be observant a lot of times flowers actually form but they're being eaten off when they're young and that's because flowers are very very tender things like slugs and snails even other insects as well can munch away those flowers i've seen rabbits eat flowers i've seen deer eat flowers they're very nutritious they're also very tender and so it's it's kind of a it's a soft target for for pests and so a lot of people think that you know their their plants just aren't producing flowers but in fact they're being eaten and so you need to be out there in your garden observing your garden and seeing okay so there was a flower there one day there's not one now you know making sure that you're really looking for signs of damage signs of pests the presence in their garden and that way you can better understand if they're actually consuming your plants because you know your plants are definitely not immune to being consumed and hey the the animals just want to survive just like you do and it's a food source for them just as much as just as much as a food source for you and so just keep that in mind that you know there can be some pest damage and i know a lot of people if they don't regularly check on their garden they assume that it's something they're doing wrong and they're like my plants just aren't producing flowers but yet every night when all the you know animals come out when you're not in the garden they're in the garden basically making a a salad bar or you know a uh you know a food a buffet of your of your garden and they're eating all those flowers so just keep in mind of that and if it is pest damage there's lots of ways to to deter slugs snails we've done videos on that there's lots of ways to deter deer we've done videos on that rabbits we've done videos on that there's lots of ways to deter those pests and you can certainly address that but it's usually more often than not it's too early in the season it's too hot or too cold and they just don't want to risk putting out fruit because they don't want to die or it's just too dry that's generally more often than not those three nutrients like nitrogen is typically like it's pretty common but it's still fairly uncommon and then pest damage you know completely eating away the flowers you know stuff like that can happen i've seen it happen but is the most common it's probably the least common so that's kind of in order of of how it goes from most common to least common i hope you guys enjoyed i hope you learned something new there are five reasons why your squash plants might only be producing male flowers i hope you guys enjoyed i hope you learned something new if you did enjoy make sure to throw a like up there share this video with a friend and uh sorry onion make sure to share a video this video with a friend if you think they'd enjoy it and as always this is luke from the on my gardener channel reminding you to grow big or go home and we'll catch you all later see you bye

Channel: MIgardener

Views: 379,254

Keywords: Premiere_Elements_2018, female flower, five, flowers, garden, garden tip, gardening tip, male flower, migardener, organic, plants, reasons, squash, top 5, troubleshooting, tutorial

Id: wCXSYt6dWUI

Length: 11min 31sec (691 seconds)

Published: Tue Jun 08 2021