I went out to check on my squash plants yesterday and they are full of tiny little inch long squash. The weird part is that they had blooms starting to form but they never opened up to a flower. Instead, of blooming they went straight to producing squash. How did they do that??? How could the flowers be pollinated without even opening up? I'm not complaining... just wondering? Kat
Are the flowers still there? They will go ahead and make a little squash, then open the flower to polinate it. Then if it is not pollinated, the plant will drop the squash.
Thats what I was afraid of! They probably will fall off because its supposed to rain for the next 7 days here and I doubt the bees will be doing their jobs much. Well, at least the plants are doing good and maybe by next week the weather will be better and I will have fresh squash to fix (I hope!) Thanks for answering me, I've never seen squash do this before. Kathy
Some of the blossoms won't have the little finger sized squash behind them. These are the male blossoms. When the male blossoms are opened up and full sized, they can be picked, cleaned, dipped into an egg, and milk batter then fried. They are mighty good that way, and the female blossoms will still spawn a little squash. Just cut out the green center part and soak them in salt water until you have enough collected to have a big platter full, because they go like hot cakes.
If you think the bees won't be around, you can always hand pollinate: http://www.ppdl.purdue.edu/ppdl/expert/Pollinating_Squash.html
