I've got about 5-7 cucumber plants, but so far, I've only seen one male flower among the lot. On the other hand, I've spotted around 30 female flowers, but only one has been pollinated. I'm wondering how I might encourage more male flowers to grow or how to manually pollinate the females. Plus, there's one plant that's growing rapidly but hasn't produced any flowers at all. Should I just yank it out? I'd appreciate any advice!
3 Answers
You can try hand-pollinating by using a brush or a Q-tip. Grab the pollen from the male flower and gently apply it to the female flowers. And don’t pull any plants just yet—give them some time!
For that plant that’s not producing any flowers, consider giving it a liquid soluble fertilizer that’s high in phosphorus and potassium—like a 10-30-20 mix. It could help push it to start flowering. Also, make sure you're not dealing with a gynoecious variety. Sometimes these come with a male-seed or two, and if you didn't plant those, you’re left with only females! Hand-pollinating is tricky; the timing has to be right. You might want to grab a flowering cucumber plant from a nursery to speed up the process instead of starting over from seeds!
Typically, you'd expect more male flowers, but maybe you’ve got a parthenocarpic gynoecious type, which produces mostly females that don’t need pollination for fruit. If that’s the case, getting some male flowers is essential to mix in! I had a similar experience last year with zucchini—ended up with plenty of them!
I’ve tried that with my one male flower but didn’t have any luck. Is there a reason why I only have female flowers popping up?