Tuesday, July 09, 2013

The sex life of the zucchini

I grow a variety of zucchini called Raven.  It produces a dark 7"-8" compact fruit.  But this year I have a problem. Bad sexual timing.


The zucchini produces both male and female flowers.  The female flower has an immature fruit on its base and needs to be pollinated by the male pollen in order to grow into a robust fruit.  I have four plants in the garden and for some reason, the male flowers are all coming out on one day and the female flowers on the next leaving me with these immature nubbins.  

I have never had this problem before, really.  And where in the past I would have more male to female flowers, this year it is more female to male.

Before the bees came, I had a few good timing days, but it meant I was out there playing Gregor Mendel every morning.

Isn't zucchini the crop you can turn your back on and not worry about?  What is with this sexual dysfunction?





1 comment:

Anonymous said...

I had a lot of difficulty getting zucchini to set fruit in my poor sandy soil until I added fertilizer which was rich in potassium, now I have a few, so that could be part of it.