The number one issue people seem to have when growing zucchini is they get big plants and no vegetable. A lack of vegetable can mean one of two things: not having a good mixture of male and female flowers, or poor pollination. Last year, thankfully, we didn’t have either of these problems and had zucchini coming out of the whaa-zoo.
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| Last year's final zucchini harvest before removing the plants |
That being said, I was still concerned about actually getting any zucchini and this lead to “Zucchini Research.” What I discovered is the key to growing zucchini lies in understanding the zucchini flower.
To take you back to elementary school science, the flowers on most plants have both the male and female parts so in theory only one flower is needed to reproduce. With zucchini plants, there are male and female flowers so at the very least you need two flowers to produce a zucchini. Note that the flowers are a specific gender, not the plants: one plant can have both male and female flowers.
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| Female Flower Bud on the left, cluster of Male Flower Buds in the middle |
As soon as your plants begin to produce buds you can tell if the flowers will be male or female. The male buds are attached to the plant stems. The female flowers are not attached directly to the stem of the plant: between the stem and the bud there is the beginning of a mini zucchini. As the bud grows and turns into a flower, this mini zucchini will grow into a full size zucchini. If the flower does not get fertilized, the small zucchini with shrivel up.
When you start to see buds on your plants, if the conditions are right, they will produce flowers quickly. A few days ago I discovered some buds and tonight I see one is almost ready to open and will likely be open tomorrow.
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| 2 Female Flowers |
As far as pollination goes, if you wish to leave things to Mother Nature you need to have bees around. Because we have a huge raspberry patch in the garden and have 30 acres of clover 20 feet away from the garden, having enough bees around is not a problem. If you do have trouble with pollination, you can use a Q-Tip to transfers the pollen from the male flower to the female flower.
Something interesting to note about bees is that they will travel up to 5 miles for food. If you have bees that have a taste for zucchini flowers, chances are they are also visiting other zucchini flowers in the neighborhood. Last year my first flower to open was a female flower and it was a while before any male flowers opened. Somehow I ended up with a zucchini. I know both of our closest neighbors have gardens and I know for sure one of them grows zucchini: maybe one of my neighbor’s male flowers pollinated my female flower.
If you are a bit of a worry wart like myself, if you have bees around don’t worry as your flowers will likely get pollinated. Last year I was concerned about pollination and wanted to interfere and do the Q-Tip trick but Steve stopped me. He firmly stated I fussing with things too much and that I needed to let Mother Nature do her thing. Needless to say everything turned out okay and we ended up with literally dozens of zucchini. And… out of the many, many zucchini flowers we had last year, I think there was only one that did not get pollinated - and it was a late season flower so the bees were more than likely gone already.
To ensure a good mix of flowers for pollination it is best to grow several plants thus increasing your chances. It also helps to grow your zucchini in a plot as opposed to rows. Last year we planted two rows of three for a total of six plants. This year we planted a 3 x 3 plot that consists of 6 Onyx Zucchini and 3 Vegetable Spaghetti Squash.
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| Zucchini/Squash Plot |
If I could offer any advice on growing zucchini it would be to be patient. On many occasions last year I thought nothing would get pollinated, all the mini zucchinis would shrivel up and I constantly wanted to fuss with them. Thankfully I have a husband who was very adamant about me not interfering and just like he said, everything turned out fine.
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