My zucchini and yellow squash are covered in flowers but I’m barely getting any actual squash. The plants look healthy otherwise. What’s going on, and how do I fix it?
Oh, this one trips up a lot of folks their first few seasons — you’re definitely not alone!
Squash plants make two kinds of flowers: male and female. The males show up first, sometimes by a week or two, and they’ll bloom and drop without making a single squash. That’s completely normal. The female flowers are the ones with a tiny little proto-squash at the base of the bloom. No female flower, no fruit.
Once you’ve got both blooming at the same time, the next thing you need is pollinators moving between them. If your bee traffic is low — early morning, cloudy stretch of weather, or just not many bees in your area — the flowers can open and close without getting pollinated.
A few things to check:
- Look closely at your flowers. See that little swollen bump at the base of some of them? That’s a female. If you’re only seeing flowers without that bump, just wait a bit — the females are coming.
- Are you seeing bees or other pollinators working the garden in the morning? Squash flowers open early and close by midday, so that’s your window.
- If pollinators are scarce, you can hand-pollinate yourself. Take a small paintbrush or just snap off a male flower and dab its center against the center of an open female. Takes about thirty seconds and works great.
Also worth knowing — hot spells (consistently above 90°F or so) can cause poor fruit set even when everything else is right. Plants will pick back up when temps ease.
Give it another week, look for those females, and try hand-pollinating a few if you can catch them open in the morning. Bet you’ll start seeing squash on the vine before long.