Why are my zucchinis producing only male flowers?
That’s not as unusual as you might think.
It's common for zucchinis to produce male flowers several days or weeks before they start producing female flowers. A delay of between one and three weeks from the appearance of the first male flowers to the appearance of the first females is considered normal. Possibly this is a ploy by members of the squash family to attract pollinators to the vicinity in the weeks leading up to maturity, increasing the chances that those pollinators will be close by when the female flowers finally open.
Since female flowers, unlike males, will only start appearing once zucchini plants reach reproductive maturity, their failure to materialize means that your zucchinis aren't quite ready to start producing fruit despite the relative lateness of the season.
It's extremely rare for female flowers to not show up at all, so just be patient.
Developmental delays are usually the result of physiological issues. Your plants may be lacking in certain nutrients, growing in too much shade, or suffering from inconsistent watering. Any of those will cause these sorts of issues.
In a year like this one, you wouldn't be out of line to blame the weather, particularly that drought we had in June. Droughts are by no means a surprising occurrence during the summer in British Columbia and although you could easily argue that no time is a good time for a drought, June is a particularly bad month for one to show up. That’s because June is when warm season plants such as tomatoes, squashes, beans and corn (to name only a few) rapidly put on vegetative growth and to do this they need copious amounts of water.
Although you no doubt were watering during this time period, there truly is no substitute for rainfall when it comes to plant productivity.For this reason, it’s no surprise that some gardeners are now reporting reproductive delays in their crops. Considering the delays in vegetative growth, it would be more surprising if things were ripening on time.
My own zucchini only started to produce fruit within the past week, so I join you in feeling the pain. Normally I would’ve expected bumper crops around mid-July, but the plants, although perfectly healthy, didn’t really start aggressively putting on leaf growth until after the rain finally came, so I can’t claim surprise.
If you have any questions or comments, please send them to me at vanessa@gardenmuse.ca.
