The summer squash failed.

[conuly]

The vines made flowers, but nothing came of it. Not just here in our yard, but in the community garden as well.

This has got to be another sign of the apocalypse. I've never heard of squash failing before. Not enough bees, maybe?

Comments

[fayanora]

Dunno if summer squash is the same thing as zucchini or not, but I've had zucchini fail before. Stuff happens. Admittedly it was usually disease...

[conuly]

More or less the same thing.

[pensnest]

My FIL has taught me, of late, that it can be helpful to hand-fertilise the 'female' flowers of zucchini and squash plants, by taking a finger-load of pollen from the 'male' flower of a suitable nearby plant and shoving it into the female flower. His squashes and zucchini do seem to thrive on this treatment.

[conuly]

Bom chicka wow wow!

[zesty_pinto]

I've got squash that are not giving fruit yet, but they're late bloomers anyway (the ones I put out ahead of time tend to get eaten by squirrels) and have yet to flower. On the other hand, one of my neighbors has cukes and they're thriving like nobody's business, so...

[redbird]

I found out last year that there's a kind of mildew which is common on, and destructive to, cucumber plants, and that it can lurk in the soil and affect next year's crop of cucumbers and squashes. I don't know if that's your issue, but I can easily see someone thinking "okay, cucumbers didn't work, I'll plant something else this year."

The sign of that would be dried-up or shriveled leaves, or fruit shriveling and/or turning odd colors on the vine.

[conuly]

Well, last year's garden wasn't, for obvious reasons. Anyway, crop rotation means you don't plant the same family in the same spot two years in a row, doesn't it? But I guess a lot of people don't think of it, or assume that sufficient fertilizer will obviate that problem.

[dawn_felagund]

Do you know if the plants were producing both male and female flowers? Here's how to tell if you don't know. :)

If they were/are, then it might be a lack of pollinators. As someone else suggested, you can hand-pollinate your female flowers with the males.

I've also had squash crops fail because of a host of pest/disease problems: squash vine borers, squash bugs, bacterial wilt, and powdery mildew. (In Maryland, we could not get a crop of pumpkins to survive using organic methods. We've finally had success after moving to Vermont because, while we still have pests, they are not nearly as bad.) But all of those things produce very obvious symptoms in the plants (like--death! :D), so my hypothesis based on what I know about squash (too much from battling to grow it all these years! :D) and what you said here is probably a lack of pollinators. The good news about that is that it is fixable for future years with a little extra effort. The bad news is ... yeah, it's a lack of pollinators. :^\

[conuly]

No, I don't know. Maybe that's it, in which case I feel very much relieved!

[rahirah]

I have seen very, very few bees this year, and we have four citrus trees and lots of bee-friendly plants. It's worrisome.

[conuly]

Sigh.

[alchemia]

Our bottle gourd plant is huge, but no squash; tons of flowers. I haven't been able to get out to tend the garden much so didn't realise until recently that it isn't a (or just) a pollinator problem, but that for some reason, the flowers are opening at *night* and closed in the day!
but in most cases, problems of lack of squashes are due to either
- disease (this would be obvious by the vines or leaves)
- lack of pollinators (can be fixed by hand-pollinating the flowers)
- a single-gendered plant without other plants near by for pollination (some courgettes for example have been selected for all male flowers because as the larger flower, this is what people are actually growing it for- they collect the flowers and deep fry them- pretty tasty, but you won't get many/any actual courgettes/zuchinis) from the plant; you need a female plant nearby.

If hand pollinating isnt an option, you may want to try battering and frying the flowers.

[conuly]

I think our flowers have all dropped by now, but I'll try it next year. If we plant squash at all, that is - the girls won't eat it, so I don't know what my mom was thinking.