Male and female squash blossoms sometimes can look a lot alike. But if you want to increase your vegetable yield, there’s one sure fire way to do that. Hand pollination of the blossoms.
Squash plants are some of the fastest vegetables to grow in your home garden. Soon after planting, you get a big bushy plant with lots of leaves. If you have improved the soil to ensure sufficient phosphorus, you will also have lots of flowers, too (phosphorus increases blooms).
But, it seems, no fruit. Or maybe you have seen some baby fruit, but they all wither and die after a few days old. What’s happening with your plants and how can you increase your fruit yield? There is a very simple solution to get your squash producing abundantly.
There are a few reasons why you would need to identify male from female squash blossoms. First, you want to know which blossom is the one to eat (that would be the male!). Or, perhaps you want to pollinate your squash plants for higher production.
How are Squash Different from other Vegetables?
Squash, pumpkins, gourd, cucumber, melons and other cucurbits are not self-pollinating like tomatoes and peppers are. They need a little help to pollinate and produce fruit.
Tomatoes and peppers have both the male and female parts all within the same flower, which is how they can self pollinate. However squash have two separate types of flower – a male and a female flower. The pollen from a male flower must get transferred to the female flower in order for the baby fruit to grow.
Usually, bees, hummingbirds, ants and other insects will do this pollination for you. This is why we love our insects! Here at Montegatta we welcome the bees and set out hummingbird feeders amidst the gourd trellises to invite pollinators to visit. We never use synthetic, indiscriminate pesticides which could harm the beneficial as well as the bad.
Even so, there are times when the squash just are not getting pollinated. For example, when it gets really hot, the bees and other pollinators retreat to their hives or nests to conserve energy. The same is true when it is on the cool side. Even wind can force pollinators to stay close to shelter.
If these or other unfavorable conditions last for more than a few days, you will not get any squash on your plants. This is when we gardeners must step in to help things along. The process is easy, and I find it fun, too!
Below I will describe two ways to tell the two apart. One is by looking at the stem, and the other is to look inside the flower.
#1: How to Identify a Female Squash Flower
So – how to actually identify which is the male flower and which is the female flower? The first and easiest way is to examine the stem. Check if the flower has a small immature fruit at the base of the flower. The little fruit should be in the relative shape of what an adult squash for this plant would look like. So if it is a cucumber plant, the immature fruit will look elongated, like a cucumber. An immature pumpkin would be more rounded.
If the little fruit is there, this is your female squash blossom. The male flower is not going to have this swelling at the base of the flower. There might be a little bump, especially on pumpkins, but it will not be nearly as big as the one a female flower will have.
But note – just because you see a baby fruit does not mean you will get a big fruit! This little gal might not yet be pollinated! As long as the flower is still attached to the baby fruit, the flower can still be pollinated. Once the flower falls off, the fruit is no longer able to be pollinated. If it hasn’t been, the fruit will just wither and die.
#2: Male and Female Squash Blossoms on the Inside
The second way to tell male and female squash blossoms apart is to look at the inside of the flower. Let’s say, for argument, that you only have one flower and not two to compare.
Take a peak inside at the center of the flower. The male which produces the pollen, will have a long, narrow protrusion, called the anther, or along with the filament, called the stamen. It may look ‘dusty’ from the pollen. The female has a larger center, which looks like a little flower inside the flower. This is called the stigma. The stigma is your ‘bullseye’ when hand-pollinating.
Interestingly, male flowers are more prolific, and are also usually produced earlier on your plants. Females, on the other hand, won’t start forming on the plant until a few weeks after their partners, and may take a little longer to develop.
There are also usually fewer fruit bearing female flowers on the plant at any given time. They take much more energy from the plant to form, so will only appear when the plant judges that conditions are just right.
Male Gourd Flowers
But telling the flowers apart from just the center of the flower isn’t always so easy. Let us go back to the lovely gourds. Here you can see that the male anther is not elongated as it was in the above image of the acorn squash flowers. At first glance, it might be easy to confuse the two.
You can clearly see the dusty pollen, and tell the differences in shape between the make and female flowers when compared closely.
But where is the anther? Male gourd flowers have stamens grouped together in the centre of the flower. The anthers are curved in shape, so that from the top it might be difficult to see. However, if you were to cut the flower through the center, you would be able to clearly see the long anther from the side view.
The rest of the pollination process is easy – armed with your small paintbrush. I hope this helps you become an expert at being able to identify male and female squash blossoms, and increase your gardening yield!
