If a large number of male flowers have appeared on your cucumbers, and female flowers are still not visible, do not despair. We will tell you what is the cause of the problem and how to fix it.
Perhaps the easiest way to forget about the problem of empty flowers once and for all is to sow the seeds self-pollinating or self-fertile(parthenocarpic) varieties. The flowers of the first group have both stamens and a pistil, so the very concept of an empty flower is not applicable to them. The latter do not need pollination at all and produce fruits without seeds.
However, if you "settled" cucumbers with dioecious flowers in your garden, some mistakes in care can lead to the appearance of a large number of empty flowers.
Never pick off the male flowers. Following our tips, you can speed up the appearance of female flowers on plants. If by this time there is no empty flower left on the cucumbers at all, this means that female flowers with an ovary simply cannot be pollinated. After pollination, barren flowers always dry up and fall off on their own.
Distinguishing female flowers from male flowers is very simple. Male flowers grow on stalks (which is why they are called barren flowers), and female flowers always have thickenings in the form of small cucumbers.
Reason 1. Poor quality cucumber seeds
When buying ready-made seeds from a good manufacturer, you can be more or less sure that they are of high quality, healthy, and ready for sowing. Another thing is when you decide to collect the seeds of your favorite cucumbers yourself.
An inexperienced gardener may not suspect that not all cucumbers are suitable for propagation. As a result, the collected seeds may not grow at all what you expected.
The irregular shape of a cucumber is a sure sign that seeds cannot be collected from it.
It is possible that a large number of empty flowers on cucumbers (especially in combination with an irregularly shaped fruit) indicates that the "donor" of seeds was itself a hybrid or pollinated with a hybrid. Given that it is rather difficult to control pollination at home, if possible, self-harvesting of seeds is fraught with constant surprises.
Decision: Buy seeds from a proven agricultural company.
Reason 2. Sowing too "young" seeds
The correct planting material for cucumber is seeds with a 4-year "aging" (in extreme cases, they can be 2-3 years). The fact is that the seeds collected last year are not yet ready for sowing. Plants grown from them will produce a lot of barren flowers.
Decision: Warm seeds before sowing. To begin with, they are disinfected by soaking in a 1% (pink) solution of potassium permanganate for 20-30 minutes. After that, they dry it well and keep it next to the central heating battery for a month (the air temperature in this place should be in the range of 25-28 ° C).
An accelerated (but also more risky) way is to ignite the seeds in the oven at a temperature of 50-60 ° C for 2 hours. Before sowing, you can also soak the seeds in an immunomodulator solution (Novosil, Zircon, etc.), which will increase the yield of plants.
Hybrid seeds should not be heated.
Reason 3. Improper watering of cucumbers
Let's say you bought high-quality seeds, just in case, disinfected and germinated them before sowing, but there is still a dominance of barren flowers in the cucumber garden. Perhaps you overdid it with watering cucumbers or watered them with too cold water.
Cucumbers should never be watered with cold water.
Decision: Moderately water the cucumbers with warm water (temperature about 25 ° C). There is another trick - with the beginning of flowering, watering the plants is stopped. As a result of such "shock therapy", female flowers are quickly formed on the shoots. After the appearance of the ovaries, it is necessary to return to the usual method of watering.
Reason 4. Heat
Unfortunately, hot summer weather during the flowering of cucumbers can adversely affect plant fertility. The air temperature above 27°C "sterilizes" the pollen of the male cucumber flowers, and greens do not set.
Decision: Enhanced watering. To reduce the risk of losing the cucumber crop, watering, contrary to the previous advice, should be done twice a day: in the morning and in the evening, when the sun is low.
Reason 5. Cold weather
Do not forget that this culture comes from their southern regions, and the cold does not benefit it. If the summer turned out to be abnormally cold, whether you like it or not, it will not be easy to get female flowers on cucumbers.
Decision: Stop watering when the air temperature is below 15°C. As we said above, this will stimulate the early formation of female flowers.
Reason 6. Lack of lighting
Another common reason for the formation of empty flowers on cucumbers is a lack of sunlight. If you have allocated a shaded plot of the garden for a cucumber bed, you can not count on a good harvest.
Decision: Sow cucumbers on the southeastern, well-lit side of the site. If the cucumbers have already been sown, the situation can be saved by limiting watering and pinching the main lash. In early-ripening cucumbers, the stem is pinched after 8-10 leaves, in late-ripening cucumbers - after 6-8. This will stimulate the growth of lateral lashes, on which female flowers are formed.
Cucumbers need plenty of sunlight to grow well.
Reason 7. Improper feeding
If you overfed your cucumbers with nitrogen-containing fertilizers, they can begin to fatten up, that is, build up green mass without producing fruit. This is because in such "well-fed" conditions, the plant simply does not need to take care of the offspring - it is quite comfortable with an excess of nitrogen.
Decision: Follow the feeding schedule. For a good harvest, cucumbers must be fertilized with potassium and phosphorus. Before sowing seeds, it is good to apply both organic and mineral fertilizers at the rate of 10-15 kg of rotted compost or manure, 20 g of superphosphate, potassium sulfate and urea, 10 g of potassium chloride per sq.m.
After germination, in phase 2 of true leaves, cucumbers are fed with nitrophoska or nitroammofoska (1 tablespoon per 1 liter of warm water). With the beginning of flowering, nitrogen is excluded from top dressing. In total, you can feed cucumbers 4 times per season.
Reason 8. Thickened crops
If you have planted cucumbers too densely, do not be surprised at the large number of empty flowers. If the plants in the garden are crowded, this affects their development: they grow slowly, and female flowers may not appear. In addition, even with the appearance of flowers with an ovary, it is too early to breathe a sigh of relief - the thickening of the crops can prevent pollination.
Decision: Compliance with the cucumber planting scheme (25 × 25 cm). If the plants are already planted in the ground, it remains only to "clear" the space between shoots as much as possible. To do this, pinch the main lash of seedlings. This will stop overgrowth and stimulate the appearance of female flowers.
Too much planting density does not allow bees to reach the flowers
If female flowers appear on the plants, but you notice that bees do not land on them, you will have to pollinate the cucumbers yourself. To do this, in the morning, as soon as the flowers have blossomed, tear off the corolla of the male flower and gently touch it to the stigma of the female flower. One female flower is best pollinated by two or three male ones.
We hope our advice has helped you understand the reasons for the appearance of a large number of "empty" flowers on cucumbers and eliminate these factors in a timely manner.
