Zucchini --- no female flowers

[gardenerjag]

Help! My zucchini has beautiful male yellow flowers that open almost every morning. I check each morning for female flowers, but there aren't any. I know some have said to self pollinate, but there are no female flowers to polinate. Am I doing something wrong? It is mid August and my other plants have plenty of other veggies growing (mainly eggplant). Why won't my zucchini plant produce female flowers???

[pd]

I can't see it being your fault nor environmental. I would guess a seed borne genetic abnormality. My only suggestion is to remove most of the male flowers as they appear to keep it naturally wanting to produce more - and perhaps some will be female ones.

[Glocat]

Mee too! I have luscious plants with tons of male flowers. Sometimes I can find one female, but the rest are proud males. I have a cucumber plant that is huge with only 2 cukes on it, (they have been growing for weeks), and they just became larger the other day for the first time. I have one baby cuke that has been a baby cuke forever. Flowers everywhere! I finally pinched the end of a forever reaching giant vine this morning! I hope that helps.

I had been using 10-10-10 about every 3 weeks, and only just started using vermicompost tea. Reading somewhere else about getting great plants and no fruit has me re-thinking that one..

Does anyone know if sprinkling epsom salt or regular salt around these plants will stop the slugs from eating my crookneck?

Everything I have is huge and beautiful and only just now starting to fruit, (peppers, tomatoes, and I think I might have some tomatillos - my very first peppers at all!!!!)

I am so proud of them, I will have to post a few pics!!!

Looking forward to hearing from you all.

Glo in NE Nevada, (5)

[petalfuzz]

My pumpkins were the same. After months, I finally got one female flower but it had insufficient pollination and dropped off. I threw up my hands today and pulled all 3 vines out--they had powdery mildew anyway. Oh, well. I guess these things just happen sometimes.

[ckinney]

I was turned onto cooking with flowers from when I was visiting a community garden in Calistoga. The lady who told me about it said she always picks the males to cook with and leaves the females for the fruit.

This is a site with recipes for cooking with the flowers, https://www.virtualitalia.com/recipes/zucchini_flowers.shtml

At least this way the whole harvest won't feel like a complete bust and you get to try something new.

Good luck - Chris