Two plants, healthy looking, huge leaves, flowering constantly. Every little fruit gets to about 5cm, the blossom end goes soft and yellow, and within two days the whole thing is mush and drops off. I am watering at the base every other day. There are bees around but I mostly see them on the borage. Third season growing these and this is new. What am I missing?
Second the hand pollination. Also look at when your flowers are open. In real heat the flowers open and close by mid-morning and bees are working whatever is easiest, which by the sound of it is your borage. Nothing wrong with that, it just means you are the pollinator this year.
A paintbrush works too if you feel bad tearing off the males. Same brush all round the patch, thirty seconds a day.
One more thing to rule out: squash vine borer or a rotting crown will cause fruit drop too, but the plant looks sick within a week. Yours sounds vigorous, so I would not chase that.
Small chance it is blossom end rot instead, which also goes soft at the blossom end but leaves a sunken leathery patch rather than turning to mush all over. If it is that, the culprit is uneven watering rather than calcium in the soil, whatever the bottle at the garden centre claims.
@root_rot_rex · 4mo ago · 3 replies
That is unpollinated fruit aborting, not a disease. Squash carry male and female flowers separately, the female has a tiny fruit behind the flower, and if she is not pollinated in the few hours the flower is open the plant drops the investment. Go out between 7 and 10am, pick a male flower, strip the petals, and rub the anther directly on the female's stigma. Two females per male is fine. You will know within 48 hours because a pollinated fruit visibly swells rather than softens.
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@label_reader_lo · 4mo ago
Did four this morning. Two have already gone from 5cm to maybe 7 and feel firm. This was it.
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@batch_bea · 4mo ago
Worth adding for future readers: the first flush of flowers on a young plant is often all male, which panics people. Females follow about a week later.
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