The other day, I was working in my garden and I stopped to talk to Aunt Denise. She has a squash plant in front of her house and she was wondering what kind it was. I told her I didn’t see any female flowers to give me a clue. We started talking about male and female flowers on squash and I thought I’d make sure it was big enough for her to see (rather than sending pictures in a text message). So, Aunt Denise, this post is for you.
As you can see in the picture above, squash plants have both male and female flowers. The male flowers are on a fairly, thin long stem, while female flowers have a short stem, the fruit, then the flower. There’s a lot I don’t know about squash production, but the females have to be pollinated in order for fruit to develop (the squash in the picture below didn’t ever seem to open and eventually looked like it was rotting, so I pulled it off, but it is another female). I learned in some of my research that the male flowers are how you can enjoy eating squash blossoms without sacrificing your squash production (just don’t pull all the males off).
So, while I still don’t know what kind of squash you’re growing, Aunt Denise, this should answer your question about how to tell the males from the females.
One Room Note House 