Prune zucchini and squash plants for MAXIMUM production| Promotes new growth and prevents disease

Oh what's up everybody today I'm going to be talking about pruning your zucchini and a whole bunch of other tips to get maximum yield all season long so [Music] every year people have asked me like how do you keep your zucchini and your squash plants just blooming all season long my nipple approaches a lot in the beginning of the season and they just kind of peter out well i'm going to show you and this raised bed here I've got squash plants and zucchini plants and one of the most important things I do to keep the production going its pruning and I'm going to explain to you why one of the main enemies of squash and zucchini plants is powdery mildew and this is usually a result of poor air circulation and in this bed here you see I've got my squash and zucchini plants planted pretty close together because you well in a raised bed you got to conserve as much space as possible so if you want to come in here I'll show you that uh when these leaves start crossing here and this is only going to get much worse throughout the season I like to go ahead and prune all the leaves that are crossing over each other this is going to help with not only air circulation but actually pollination so in the morning the yellow flowers on the squash and zucchini plants you'll notice they open up and you have a small window of time for bees to find that flower which is usually the male flower first and then pollinate the female flower which is the flower that's on the end of the actual fruit and what ends up happening is on zucchini and squash plants the foliage grows so dense that bees actually have trouble finding the flowers so pruning will not only help the air circulation it's going to help bees find the flowers to pollinate your squash and zucchini this is the afternoon and the flowers are closed up but you can still see where they're at let's take a closer look and I'll show you the difference between a male and female flower so right here this is a male flower you see it's not actually on the end of the fruit it's just a stem that protrudes out of the middle this will open up in the morning and the same for the female flowers which are on the end of the actual fruit you see I got a zucchini here growing and this is the fleet female flower which opens up now this this zucchinis already been pollinated so don't worry about the flower that just fell off but what typically happens is young fruit will have these female flowers that open up and when bees touch from the male flower to the female far it actually pollinates so right now let's take a look at a video I shot this morning of an example of bees pollinating this squash and zucchini what's up everybody I just walked down to my garden this morning and noticed this guy this is such a good sign you can see he is pollinating my squash right now and without without this happening squash just tends to grow about 3 or 4 inches tall and then rot a lot of people think that they have a calcium deficiency when in fact it's a pollination issue this is what you want to see right here every morning oh and we got another guy fighting for it I think you just found this bloom over here Oh I've lost him anyways guys I'm gonna say it again when you're trying to grow squash or zucchini and the little squashes are coming off the stem and they're getting about that tall and then rotting you could have a calcium deficiency but I'm telling you 80 90 percent of the time you're just not getting pollination so you either have to do one of two things plant a bunch of flowers like b-bomb Lantana something to attract bees down your garden or you can manually pollinate your squash by touching the female flowers with a q-tip to the male flowers okay now that we've covered pollination let's go back to pruning and let me show you how to remove some unnecessary foliage so don't be scared you know it's a lot like tomatoes this doesn't hurt the plant but I want to go ahead and remove a few of these leaves that are crossing over again we're trying to promote as much air circulation as possible to prevent disease and will probably take that one too and these are pretty young plants so I don't have to do heavy pruning but I just want to go ahead and show you guys as from a young plant to mature how to prune your zucchini and squash plants all right and one thing I want to note here is you see these speckled leaves this is completely normal on zucchini leaves it's just a pattern that develops throughout the plant you you won't see it on squash but you definitely will see that on zucchini and the last thing I'll add is one reason my squash and zucchini plants just keep producing all summer long instead of just that bumper crop right at the beginning is because pruning actually promotes new growth so if you'll take a look here I'll show you once more that all this new foliage here that's coming out of the top that's new growth and by pruning your old growth it keeps the new growth keep stemming from the top zucchini and squash actually grow from the top some people even stake them I've not tried that yet that might be for a video later on but for now this is the best way to keep your zucchini and squash plants going strong all summer long folks I hope you enjoyed this video if you did go ahead and hit the like button also comment down below if you learned anything from this video what you're taking away from it and lastly if you haven't done so already hit that subscribe button we would love to have you as part of our S&K family so until next time see you in the garden

Channel: S&K Greenhouse

Views: 1,828,547

Keywords: garden, zucchini, squash, vegetablegardening, gardening, vegetableplants, vegetables, blossomendrot, powderymildew, plants, gardentips

Id: MoNY9BiDQF8

Length: 6min 48sec (408 seconds)

Published: Sun Jun 07 2020