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Key Points
- Most flowers on cucumbers are male and don’t produce fruit. Fruit-producing female flowers appear later.
- Cucumbers may not fruit due to poor pollination, extreme weather, or inconsistent watering.
- If the cause is a lack of pollinators, hand-pollination is an option.
Cucumber plants are known to be prolific producers, but as with all homegrown vegetables, things can go wrong.
It could be that your cucumber has vines covered in lush foliage, but there are no flowers. Or there are flowers, but they drop off the plant, or they do not develop into fruit.
Luckily, it is usually not difficult to determine why cucumbers are not fruiting. Find out about possible reasons and ways to fix the problem.
Male Flowers
Most cucumber varieties produce both male and female flowers, with male flowers appearing one to two weeks earlier and in much greater numbers than female flowers, usually at a ratio of 3 to 1.
In addition to the timing, a telltale sign is that male flowers have longer, slimmer stems than female flowers. Inside the flower, male flowers have an elongated anther, the part of the pollen-producing stamen.
How to fix it: If the first flush of flowers on your plant is not fruiting, this is usually not a reason to worry. If the growing conditions are right, it’s only a question of time before you’ll be able to harvest cucumbers.
Unsuitable Weather
In cool, rainy weather, there are naturally fewer pollinators around than on sunny, warm days, resulting in a lack of pollination. The opposite—extremely hot weather—can also lead to fruiting failure in cucumbers.
How to fix it: Other than watering your cucumber plants daily during a heatwave, the only thing to do is to wait; healthy cucumber plants usually catch up and produce fruit in conducive weather.
No Pollination
Cucumbers are mostly pollinated by honeybees and bumblebees. A lack of these pollinators when the flowers are open is a common reason why cucumbers do not fruit.
It could be that the vegetation in your yard is not inviting to pollinators—for example, you have no other flowering plants but mostly lawn—or you have recently used a broad-spectrum pesticide.
How to fix it: If you don’t have enough pollinating insects around, hand-pollination is the way to go. In the morning, when the flowers are open, transfer pollen from the anther of the male flower to the stigma of the female flower, covering it generously.
Small Window
Each cucumber flower lasts only a few hours in the morning.
Inconsistent Watering
Like other plants, cucumbers react to stress by not fruiting. Going back and forth between flooding the soil with water and letting it dry out is major stress for the plant. If watering is inconsistent, cucumbers drop their flowers to conserve energy (and if they produce fruit, cucumbers may turn out bitter).
How to fix it: Water your plants regularly, giving them at least 1 inch of water per week. Hot weather or container plants require more watering. If you are unsure whether the plants need watering, insert a finger in the soil and feel it, or use a moisture meter.
Excess Nitrogen
Cucumbers are heavy feeders and need a high-nitrogen fertilizer, but too much can result in lots of foliage and little to no fruit set.
How to fix it: If you are certain that you have overfertilized your cucumber with nitrogen, flush out the soil with water to get rid of the nitrogen. Depending on the availablity around the base of the plant, you can also try to carefully work some fresh soil into the area to dilute the nitrogen concentration without disturbing the roots of the plant.
Once the plant has recovered, apply a combination of an all-purpose vegetable fertilizer, combined with a light application of a pure nitrogen fertilizer such as 1 teaspoon of bloodmeal per plant every 3 to 4 weeks.
Read the original article on The Spruce
