Yellow Squash

[Vada Cooper]

I have giant beautiful squash plants but no blooms make a squash, what am I doing wrong? The blooms just fall off leaving a green stem with no squash. :cry:

[CaptainCompostAL]

Did you add any extra phosphorus fertilizers to your soil before planting, like bone meal?

All flowering and fruiting crops need lots of phosphorus.

Sometimes the existing phosphorus in your topsoil gets "locked up" to calcium molecules and other nutrients, and becomes insoluble and unavailable to growing plants for a while. Phosphorus availablity is also very sensitive to soil pH. The more acidic the soil, the more available P becomes. However if the soil gets too acidic, your crops won't grow right.

Another way to release the phosphorus in your soil, and make it more available for your crops, is to breed more aerobic microbial growth in your topsoil and compost in or on the soil.

I try to do these with extra molasses and apple cider vingar tea soil drenches, corn meal, and/or aerated compost tea recipes, throughout my crops' growing season.

[HerbGirl]

I, too, have big, nice squash plants. They are flowering, but all the flowers are male! Anyone have a clue as to why I'm not seeing female flowers? The plants are in a raised bed to which I added lots of homemade compost and used Yum Yum mix fertilizer.

[merri]

I think the female flowers emerge a bit later than the male...maybe it is just a waiting game? I have just recently started to see fruits setting on mine, but have the dreaded triple threat of borers, squash bugs and little black and yellow beetles that seem to suck on the fruit themselves. I am starting a new topic to gleen any expertese on this issues!

hope you get your females soon!
-m