All Flowers and No Fruit, Squash Plant Slow Out of Gate

Like any expectant gardener, it's hard not to worry about the lack of fruit set on my summer squash. Oh, sure, give it time they say. She's just a late bloomer. Well, there might be something to that.

As Mr. Miodownik informed a bunch of sleepy-eyed 9th graders during biology, plants, just like mammals, reptiles, and celebrities, need both sexes to produce fruit. (ed. note: apologies to any readers with a background in the hard sciences for the extreme simplification. Yes, celebrities can, and often do, hatch from eggs, much like the lovable Mork did before meeting Mindy.)

Squash plants, being no exception to my generalization, often fail to bear fruit early on because its flowers tend to be of one sex. As the season progresses, male and female flowers appear, the lights go out, and a few glasses of Drambuie later, a vegetable is born.

Writes, Hunter Johnson, Jr. of UC Davis' Extension, "Gardeners often become concerned when many flowers appear early, but fruits fail to set. The reason for this is that all of the early flowers are males. Female flowers develop somewhat later and can be identified by the miniature fruit at the flower base. In hybrid varieties of summer squash, however, the first flowers to appear are usually females, and these will fail to develop unless there are male squash flowers -- and bees -- in the nearby area." Source: UC Davis, "Summer Squash"