Cucumber blooms but no fruit? Here's why.

The bees love these early male flowers.

A friend recently asked me why her cucumbers had lots of blossoms but was not setting fruit. All the members of the cucumber family like squashes, pumpkins and my favorite, the gourds, bloom in the same way. The first flowers that appear are male.

Young male flower. 

The plants won’t waste energy producing a female until there is pollen available. So if you look closely at the first flowers that appear you will not see any indication of a teeny fruit at the base of the flower. 

Soon there will be female flowers and these are easily identifiable once you know what to look for. At the base of each female flowers are the future fruit that you are waiting for. Once these flowers starts, the bees will then carry pollen to the female flower and pollinate it and your baby cuke or gourd will start to grow. Sometimes the little fruit doesn’t get pollinated and will drop off.

Young, unopened female gourd flower with the teeny fruit.

Male and female flowers will continue to develop along the lengthening stem until forever, I guess, or the first killing frost. If you are getting close to the end of the growing season and there are still a lot of too-small fruits, cut off the growing tip of the vines. That way the plant will put its energy into the growth of the existing fruit and not into producing more flowers that will never have a chance to develop.

Getting a gigantic pumpkin is determined not just by the kind of seed that was planted, but also by removing all other fruit from the plant so all the energy goes into the Big One.

You can see the faded male flowers and maturing gourds from
the seed mix that I planted.