Reposting about my female pumpkin flowers

[mateosbaby]

Does anyone know of possible causes for why the female flowers on my pumpkin vines keep wilting and falling off before they even get a chance to grow enough to open? I have one pumpkin doing very nicely, growing a lot. But not one of my other female flowers will blossom. I have no problems with males; they are abundant and doing just fine. I have 6-7 vines, 3 of which are very long and seem to grow at least a couple inches every couple days, and I'm in Wisconsin. I don't seem to have any bugs, and the leaves seem to be fine, not yellowing prematurely or anything like that.

Hopefully that's enough information to go off of. Thanks for any help you can give.

[Pat Kiewicz]

Squash blossoms abort when the vine cannot support setting fruit. Usually this occurs when one or more fruit have already been set but it can occur when the plants are sub-optimal for some other reason (vine borers, shade, drought or its opposite, and even heat waves).

The number of fruit per plant varies based on the species ( ex. C. pepo will set more fruit than C. maxima) and size of mature fruit (the larger the fruit, the fewer set per plant). Thus the C. pepo 'Jack Be Little' pumpkin might set a dozen or more fruit but the C. maxima 'Atlantic Giant' pumpkin might set only one.