Adam26
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Butternut squash

Need some help with squash plants I have had 4 female plants and they fertilised but 8 weeks later they dropped off
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imafan26
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Location: Hawaii, zone 12a 587 ft elev.

Pollination could have been incomplete. It takes a few visits to successfully pollinate flowers. Temperatures that are too hot or too cold can also cause the fruit to drop. The most common reason for fruit to be dropped here is because they are being stung by fruit flies or some other insect.

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rainbowgardener
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It always helps to tell us where you are located. There are hardly any garden questions that can be discussed without regard to location/ climate. (I finally broke down and made a sticky note with that on it, on my computer desktop, so I can copy/ paste it - I have typed it out so many times!)

My guess would be as noted, unpollinated or incompletely pollinated. The female flower comes with the little embryo squash already present behind the flower. Even if the flower is not pollinated, the embryo squash keeps growing for a little while and then shrivels up and drops off. Have you seen honeybees visiting your flowers? If not, you may have to hand pollinate.

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kayjay
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Similar thing happened to me. The first two females rotted and fell off. The third took. All of the subsequent ones fell off and died, until the end of August. I got one more.

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jal_ut
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"Need some help with squash plants I have had 4 female plants and they fertilised but 8 weeks later they dropped off"

You say "4 female plants". Did you mean 4 female blossoms? How many plants do you have? I don't think your squash got pollinated.

Squash require an insect pollinator or you can hand pollinate them. It is a good practice to plant a squash patch. Dad used to make hills of five seeds and put the hills 5 feet apart in the row. Now you get enough blossoms to attract bees. Do you see any bees in your garden?

imafan26
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Hand pollinating is a good idea for insurance anyway. Bees don't really head straight for the vine crops if they can get enough nectar from plants elsewhere and bees will forage only a mile or so from home. They tend to go to the same plants until they stop producing and since squash does not produce all year long, first the bees have to find the flowers and they only get one chance to pollinate since the flowers only last a day. To increase the number of bee visits plant a variety of long blooming flowers and herbs to keep them coming. I like alyssum, basil, and sunflowers. Squash bees are better pollinators of curcurbits than honeybees. they are a ground nesting bees and it is important not to disturb their habitat. Different bees are attracted to different kinds of flowers. Also for successful polination you have to have male and female flowers open at the same time. Planting a succession of cucurbits so that you have a long bloom season for the flowers will keep the pollinators around longer as well as laying off the chemicals.
https://www.gardeners.com/how-to/all-abo ... /5076.html

There are secondary pollinators like ants, moths, butterflies, birds, and flies that are primary pollinators of some plants or accidentally pollinate flowers in the course of making their rounds.

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jal_ut
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Solitary bees: There are several species of solitary bee that will nest in a hole . Take a 2x4 about 2 feet long and drill a whole bunch of 7/32 inch holes in it. Hang it up under the eaves of an outbuilding. This will attract some of the lil bees who will lay eggs in the holes which later hatch into more pollinators.

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digitS'
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Ha!

Sounds like the carpenter bees Rainbow Gardener is repelling in the thread about bees chewing up deck :D.

Gardeners and bugs have to fit in Nature together, as best we can. But, the first order of gardener busy ness has to be helping the garden plants produce.

Steve



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