plantkiller
Full Member
Posts: 27
Joined: Fri Sep 18, 2009 10:08 pm
Location: Brevard County, FL

Cucumber has no male flowers, cantaloupe has no female ones!

I've been checking my cucumber plants (I have two) every day looking for male flower(s) to pollinate the females. There are probably 10-15 female flowers on each cucumber plant at any given time but no males. Now I have had one cuke grow on each plant (one I picked yesterday and the other I will pick today) so obviously I did get a male flower that I'm guessing a bee found a week or two ago.

My cantaloupe is the exact opposite.. probably has 30 male flowers and not a single female and unlike the lucky cucumbers I got it doesn't look to have set any fruit. So my question, is there anything I can or should be doing to encourage growth of both male and female flowers?

Apart from the male/female issue, the plants are doing quite good, good growth, etc.

I can't recall the variety of the cantaloupe but the cukes are the standard "burpee hybrid" that I sprouted from seed.

Thanks everyone for any advice.

User avatar
applestar
Mod
Posts: 30514
Joined: Thu May 01, 2008 7:21 pm
Location: Zone 6, NJ (3/M)4/E ~ 10/M(11/B)

I recalled a male/female cuke flower discussion and dug up the thread:
https://www.helpfulgardener.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=16879

I read through it and the issues may not be the same, but FYI FWIW. :wink:



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