Vegetables - Cucurbits
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  We have recently moved to northeast Arkansas. We purchased topsoil this spring for our vegetable garden. We planted zucchini as well as winter squash and pumpkins. We had big plants with big leaves and lots of flowers on long stems. There were many bees to pollinate everything. The vines, however, produced poorly. We had one pumpkin, a couple of winter squash and a few zucchini. Have you any idea why we didn’t have more produce? Could you tell me where to go for garden information about this area?

  Your plants were growing vegetatively, instead of reproductively. This can be caused by several things. First, you must have a minimum of six to eight hours of sunlight every day to produce these crops. If you have more shade, that could be the problem. The other cause could be that the soil is too rich or high in nitrogen. This can cause plants to grow to the exclusion of fruiting. Cucurbits, of which all of the plants you were growing are members of, produce both male and female flowers separately on the same plant. The male flowers are vegetative growth, and will be produced even in the shade. They simply have a tall straight stalk behind them. The female flowers have a small fruit behind them, even before pollination. Once pollinated, this fruit then continues to enlarge. It sounds like most of your blooms were male. Hope you can solve the problem, whether sunlight or soil, by next growing season. Your local county extension service has a lot of great information on gardening for Arkansas. There are a whole series of vegetable fact sheets, including information on pumpkins and squash.

  If squash or cucumbers are blooming yet not setting fruit, remember there are both male and female flowers on the same plant. Males tend to bloom slightly earlier than the females. If the flower has a straight stalk behind it, it is a male flower. If there is a small fruit--cucumber, squash, cantaloupe, etc., that is a female. If you have both types of flowers and still the little fruits shrivel up, you don’t have any pollinators.

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