All my veggies have bloomed but no fruit cantaloupe,watermelon, squash etc. any answers?
Question:plants have been flowering since march. and look very healthy
Answers:
It sounds as though they're not getting pollinated. Try taking a soft, rounded-end paintbrush and doing the job yourself. Just dust one flower, go to the next, and so on.
Good luck!
You need bees! Or you can pollinate yourself!
Dances had a good answer. But be sure to rinse the brush when moving from one type of plant to the next. You don't want to cross polinate. Cantaloupe squash doesn't taste very good.
Sounds like they are not getting pollinated. You might take a cotton swab and pollinate the flowers yourself. Take some pollen from each plant with the swab and gently paint the inside of each of the flowers you can get to easily.
Use a different swab for each variety--one for squash, one for melons, etc.
Poor pollination affects fruit set. Also too much nitrogen can be a factor which will delay the setting of fruit on the vine. A mid summer heat wave can cause plant stress. The tiny pollinated fruit may abort as a result. A heat wave can also deter bees from their job, making hand pollination more important.
Melons, cucumbers, watermelons, & squash are monoicious plants : male and female flowers are to be found on the same plant. The male flowers will appear well before the female flowers and also in far greater numbers. In periods of hot weather the male flowers are more numerous. When they get a cool spell, the female population will catch up.
Male flowers are short lived. They will open up before dawn and will close completely by mid-morning.
The male flowers possess both pollen and nectar, the female flowers only nectar. If the plants are watered from overhead early in the day, that may prevent all further pollination for that day. Everything gets washed off of the short-lived male flowers. Replacement flowers do not open then until the following morning. So don't water in the morning if you want to give your plants optimum opportunity to pollinate. Having a lot of rain early in the day doesn't help pollination either, & bees are not active when it rains.
You can pollinate by hand. Take the male flower and gently rub its pollen onto the stigma sections in the center of the female flower. Pollination will be more successful if several male flowers are used to pollinate one female flower.
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