Kitchen Garden Forum

Can anyone tell me why my heathy pumpkins form, flower opens, bees seem to enter the flower. the flower dies back and the pumpkin appears to be fine then it yellows and dies. The plant still seems healthy. I have 11 small pumpkin on 5 plants but have lost about the same like this.

Hi!
I don't really know why but have had the same occur but I kind of think the mother plant can only support a certain number of growing pumpkins to maturity so they naturally abort any extra. 11 pumpkins on 5 plants - that 2 pumpkins per plant & the main mother vine still has some growing to do & you may find as it establishes more & as it takes up the nutrients it needs for the first fruit it will flower again & hold the fruit further along vine, won't be as big but got loads of time to ripen!

Thanks Westi, your reply seems sensible to me. I'll wait and see

We grew pumpkins last year, and there was only one pumpkin per plant in the finish. That may be normal, as it was the first time I'd done it, I don't know for sure. I had the same with two varieties of squash.

An update:- I have to date about 20 pumpkins growing but I am still getting an equal number of losses from 5 plants. Maybe this is normal, do anyone know?

I have one plant with about 5 fruit on it (Australian Butter), but just flowers on the others - weird, but the flowers are not the same so fruit coming! I believe they didn't like the extremes in temp in their early growing as night to day was quite extreme & more than 15 degrees at times & neither did the pollinators. They like the heat but still loads of time for them to wake up & do their thing & you can get strange pockets of fluctuations in just one bed. Watch & wait, they are late to mature & harvest time is the judgement time! I'm remaining optimistic for an Indian summer!

Thanks Westi I will wait and see, I'll let you know later in the year