Video: How to Pollinate Zucchini for a Bigger Harvest - Julia Dimakos (2024)

FAQs

How do you increase zucchini pollination? ›

Zucchini flowers tend to open up wide in the morning and are often closed by the afternoon, so it is important to hand pollinate in the morning. Pluck a fully open male flower from the plant. Peel off the petals to expose the pollen-heavy anther. Gently brush the pollen over the stigma of a fully opened female flower.

To encourage squash bees in your garden, it is best to avoid deep tillage. There have been many mornings when I have seen squash bees emerging from their soil cavities just below the leaves of cucurbits. It is also helpful to maintain untilled, marginal areas in close proximity to your squash patch.

But what pollinates our zucchini? An important and original pollinator of squash and gourds is the squash bee, (Peponapis pruinosa). It is a ground-nesting, solitary native bee that exclusively gathers pollen from plants in the squash family (genus Cucurbita), including pumpkin and gourds.

An ideal zucchini plant fertilizer will certainly contain nitrogen. An all-purpose food like 10-10-10 is generally sufficient for zucchini plant needs. They contain plenty of nitrogen to facilitate healthy growth as well as necessary potassium and phosphorus to boost fruit production.

Regular harvesting keeps plants producing more fruit. Search through the leaves for fruit as any that are left, even for a day or two, quickly turns into large marrows. Keep zucchini plants healthy by removing dead and diseased leaves and stems. This will also open up air circulation around the plant.

A month after planting, begin fertilizing your zucchini plants with Miracle-Gro® Performance Organics® Edibles Plant Nutrition Granules, which will deliver continuous food during the growing season. The result? A bigger harvest than you'd glean from unfed plants! Be sure to follow label directions.

If pollination has been successful, the small zucchini fruit at the base of the female flower will start to grow. Unsuccessful pollination will result in wilting female flowers, eventually falling off the zucchini plant.

A common misconception is that squash, melons, and cucumbers will cross-pollinate. This is not true; the female flowers of each can be fertilized only by pollen from that same species. Varieties within each species, however, will cross-pollinate.

To answer this question, it helps to know a few botanical details about zucchini. Unlike the blooms of most blooming plants that have both male and female parts in each flower, zucchini have separate male and female flowers on each plant. This makes pollination a little bit more difficult.

If a plant is not yet mature it will lack female flowers and will not produce fruit. Extremely hot weather will can also be a factor in limiting zucchini fruit growth. In hot weather zucchini plants my only produce male flowers. The alst major factor is a lack of bee activity.