Help!! My Pumpkins have no female flowers.

[EliLeonard]

As I have mentioned before, I am in a pumpkin growing contest with my family, and I was super grateful for all the suggestions and the Giant pumpkin instructions from Pharmer Phil, but I am starting to panic because It's august and I still have no female flowers on my pumpkin plants!

The plants are huge with lots of flowers, but no swells....


What can I do?



--Eli

[nes]

No help, but I'm in exactly the same spot! I've got a few very large pumpkin/squash plants (I think they are all pumpkins and my squash failed), but only 1 popped up with a flower over the weekend.

I do however have lots of buds teasing me!

[gixxerific]

Same here I have a few pumpkins with 0 fruit or female flowers for that matter.

Dono

Throw us a bone Mother nature. I seem to remember last year my pumpkin plants were huge. This year they are still very small, very small the biggest being maybe 2-3 foot long.

Just went to check hoping to come back and say Yippee I have pumpkins but all I found was a 3\8 inch baby that was aborted. That's not good, something is stressing my plants for blossom drop to occur.

I will say this to give some hope to you guy's. I was in the same boat with my watermelon 2 weeks or so ago, not a single female but tons of males. I was gong to pull it and fill that space with something else. I have three melons that I know of today.

Wait a minute here's my chance, Yippee.

[nes]

WOHOO!! Go check again you guys! It wasn't on the plant I was expecting but I found my first ever pumpkin just starting to bloom!!

BTW - is there any reason to pull male pumpkin flowers? (other then to eat them.)

[rootsy]

No, unless you are hand pollinating the females and want to ensure control of the whole pollinating process to ensure a specific mate.

[pharmerphil]

it is normal for several males to open before you see a female.
The opposite is much worse, thats having NO males to pollinate an early female, in this instance, you need to either cross pollinate, or find a gardening buddy who does have male flowers and import his pollen.
I can see concern in your area though, how many days do you have before frost could appear?

Everyone, everywhere is reporting that things are behind this year, there are areas here in Minnesota that the farmers are reporting crops to be three weeks behind!

[nes]

Woohoo! (again) *pumpkin dance time!!*

There is another female who just popped up on my largest pumpkin vine!

We frost around October 5th so I've got 30-36 days... so I'm looking at some pretty darn small pumpkins! However I'm hoping because of our crappy summer mother nature is going to be kind and give us a late frost (yeah, I'm that optimistic!).

That is a good point though - is their anything we can do to protect the pumpkins? I'm ready to head out there with my quilts

[gixxerific]

Good to hear nes I still have nothing and my plants are very small. Of course they are shaded under my Weeping Willow, but I grew some last year in the same spot.

I said before that we have very different climates, but I may be wrong. We frost around here Oct 8.

Dono