Cucumber vines producing predominantly female flowers.

[Ndpitch]

Hi all-

I'm having an issue with this year's cucumber vines. I ran into fungus issues last year, and the space they were planted in was really cramped.

So, this year I am training them up a trellis which has been working very well. The vines look very healthy. Climbing the trellis well, deep green leaves, lots of flowers.

HOWEVER, it seems the female flowers are vastly out-numbering the male flowers. I've yet to see any cucumbers start developing, but there are ample female flowers waiting to be pollenated. Out of all the vines, I counted only 3 or so male flowers - but there are probably 20 or 30 female flowers. So with these conditions, it doesn't surprise me that I'm not getting any cucumbers.

Any ideas why? The seedlings were purchased from a nursery. They are pickle bush variety. They were planted 30 days ago. They've grown tremendously well so far, but there's just no where near enough male flowers. Do I need to put an outdoor speaker out there and play Marvin Gaye's "Let's Get It On" on repeat? Haha.

Let me know what you think.

Pitch
Buffalo, NY

[pepperhead212]

There are varieties bred to produce mostly female blossoms, so that more cukes are produced. That's probably one of them.

[kayjay]

Why not pollinate them yourself? I'd just pick a male flower off the plant, peel back the petals and brush it onto the open female flowers. I do this with my zucchini, too, especially when I don't see many bees around.

[Gary350]

How can you tell the difference from male flowers to female flowers?

There are no honey bees here this year. All I see are fuzzy hair yellow and black bumble bees and few butterflies. Do you have bees.

[jal_ut]

No honey bees? Hmmmm....... perhaps you should become a backyard beekeeper? You can keep maybe three
colonies in your backyard and then have both pollinators and honey. Will your local laws allow it?

https://donce.lofthouse.com/jamaica/Pack ... gebees.htm

[imafan26]

It depends on your variety. If you have a parthenocarpic variety like Diva, Suyo, Socrates, Tyria, or Tasty Jade. They produce mostly female flowers and are parthenocarpic and do not require a polinator.

If you grow gynecious cucumber that require a polinator, usually the packet will contain 10% of a male polinator. The downside is that the seeds are not identified as to which is the polinator and which is the variety. If you are like me and don't have enough space or need to plant a whole packet of seeds, you may not have enough of the polinator variety to polinate your vine. Hand polination would then be your best bet. For myself, I plant the parthenocarpic ones instead. Occasionally they get polinated anyway and my fruit become deformed with the blossom end getting much fatter than the stem end. They are still edible but the seeds are larger than normal.

https://www.johnnyseeds.com/assets/infor ... y-8989.pdf

[applestar]

If you grow gynecious cucumber that require a polinator, usually the packet will contain 10% of a male polinator. The downside is that the seeds are not identified as to which is the polinator and which is the variety. If you are like me and don't have enough space or need to plant a whole packet of seeds, you may not have enough of the polinator variety to polinate your vine. Hand polination would then be your best bet. For myself, I plant the parthenocarpic ones instead. Occasionally they get polinated anyway and my fruit become deformed with the blossom end getting much fatter than the stem end. They are still edible but the seeds are larger than normal.

https://www.johnnyseeds.com/assets/infor ... y-8989.pdf

Ah! THAT'S what they are called! I remember mentioning this elsewhere but couldn't remember the name of this type.

[imafan26]

Apparently a lot of the newer varieties of cucumbers are gynecious and produce mostly female flowers compared to the older varieties which were more 50/50 with the male flowers appearing first. According to Johnny and some other articles I have read on greenhouse cucumbers, even parthenocarpic will occasionally put out male flowers. It is best to pick off the males on parthenocarpic plants so they don't polinate the fruit, since it leads to deformities in the fruit. The seed packet or information on the net should be able to tell you if your variety is parthenocarpic. The clues are usually burpless , greenhouse variety, seedless, or no polinator required. Rarely do the packets come out and tell you that it is parthenocarpic. I may still lose young fruit to fruit flies and stink bugs so sometimes the fruit drop is from that and not because of a polination issue.

[Ndpitch]

Interesting. I didn't know about gynecious vs parthenocarpic. I'm not sure what the variety is - I bought them as seedlings from a local nursery who was selling them as "Pickle bush cucumbers" on the sticker. Perhaps I can go back there and find out what the exact variety is.

Regarding pollenating activity - I did notice some honey bees in my yard the other day, but they seemed to be mostly interested in the weed flowers growing in my lawn. I haven't noticed much pollenating activity in thee garden at all, come to think of it.

Curious, I wonder if there is some kind of "decoy" you can put in the garden to attract bees and other pollenators to the garden. An open can of soda, honey, or something along those lines? I'm thinking of those summer cookouts where bees swarm around the left over food and open cans of soft drinks, etc.

[ThePinkPounder]

Very stimulating conversation here. I am having the same issues this year. Thanks all for the advice and Ndpitch for starting this thread!

[imafan26]

It took some looking but there is a picklebush variety. It is not parthenocarpic so it does need polinating. If you only have one plant you may have to hand polinate. Usually multiple plants are better since there is a better chance of getting male and female flowers open at the same time.

Bees like pollen and nectar but squash an cucurbits are not their favorite flowers. They prefer small flowers to large ones. They will polinate the cucumbers but it helps if you interplant some of their favorite flowers around the cukes and squash to get them to visit more. Bees usually visit the same source daily as long as the nectar and pollen hold out and only stragglers wander elsewhere. If there are a lot of flowers twenty feet away the bees wil go after them first because it is less work than for them to travel farther away to get to the next flower. Usually plants put out male flowers first to attract the bees before they start to produce the females. Alyssum, cuphea work the best for me since they have a long bloom period and the bees will visit twice a day. Unfortunately they like to polinate my orchids, not a good thing. They like small fragrant flowers. I usually let the basil bloom just for the bees and they love sunflowers and corn tassels but they only last about 10 days. They like to visit my Jamaican oregano which is almost constantly in bloom.

[applestar]

Keep in mind, too that honeybees are not the only pollinators. I know It's some other kind of bee that is more frequently visiting cucumber blossoms -- I'm trying to remember if they were bumblebees or sweat bees -- my cukes are still small and not blooming and I can't seem to remember ..... Honeybees do seem to like to take "pollen bath" in the big squash blossoms, though.

It's always a good idea to have lots of flowers -- easiest is to overseed your lawn with clovers. Not only will you have blossoms to attract the pollinators and beneficial insects, but they will help fertilize the lawn. (This doesn't work if you weed'n' feed) Though the low-growing/prostrate white clover is more common, I also used yellow sweet clover which grows tall after the first year and tried to use scarlet clover (but they didn't make it in my climate). The big Red clover grow along edges of beds and are allowed to grow then yanked or trimmed for mulch. Having different species means they will bloom at different times. Clover is larval host for some butterflies including the tiny silver gray hairstreak.

There are other flowers that work well in mixed lawn. Yarrow is another one that will work kept mowed short though tall where allowed to grow, and I have a growing circle of mother of thyme in front of the house where DH actually doesn't have to mow -- about 6 feet in diameter now.

[jal_ut]

There are small bees that will lay eggs in a hole in a tree or log. You can take a piece of 2x4 about 30 inches long and drill a whole bunch of 7/32 holes in it then hang it up out on one of your sheds under the eaves. See if any bees come to nest?

[imafan26]

There are other pollinators besides honey bees but they are the major one we know about. There are other bees and insects that pollinate plants. Most plants that live deep in forests or in dark places are polinated by flies, midges, and moths. The flowers often have a smell we would not appreciate.

There are also a number of other bees that don't get as much press or credit as polinators.

The squash bee usually polinates cucurbits and they actually are ground dwelling bees.

Sucessfull polination usually requires multiple bee visits.
https://www.fs.fed.us/wildflowers/pollin ... bees.shtml
https://ohioline.osu.edu/factsheet/ENT-57

[ButterflyLady29]

How can you tell the difference from male flowers to female flowers?.

The female flowers have little bitty cucumbers between the end of the flower and the stem. Male flowers don't.

[Ndpitch]

Things seem to be improving in recent days. All of a sudden I have a lot of honey bees in my lawn's white clover, and I have a few cucumbers that have been pollinated. I'm noticing a few more male flowers as well. We'll see where things go over the next couple of weeks!