Forward females on Squash plants

[Marken]

This is just me sharing an observation...
last year the flowers on my squash plants (butternut/yellow banana/crown prince) were all male for the first 3/4 weeks. Only then did any females appear.
This year, the first flowers have all been female, unfortunately without any males around to pollinate them (although they are present in bud. (I've heard the males are slower to mature than females but didn't know this applied to squashes as well)).
Additionally, this years plants were forming flower buds as very immature plants - perhaps with only 4 leaves.
Has anyone else noticed similar vagaries in growing seasons with other plants?
I guess we've all had bad years for things like runner beans when it seems everyone you speak to reports poor growth and cropping.

[FelixLeiter]

The formation of flowers on squashes, marrows, courgettes — any of that tribe — is temperature dependent. Male flowers predominate when the weather is cool, female flowers form when it is hot. So in most springs / early summer, male flowers are seen first because the season tends to start off chilly. However, the recent warm spell has advanced the female flowers.

i find that flowers are formed prematurely on plants which have got a little pot bound, or in some other way stressed.

[Marken]

Thanks FelixLeiter - I didn't know temperature had such an effect on flower formation. As for the plants being stressed, well they were in quite large pots for the plants size. Certainly the pot was not full of roots.
As another thought, perhaps a little "light stress" may work to our advantage if it initiates early flower production?

[oldherbaceous]

Dear Marken, the most productive plants are always the ones that have built up a good plant structure before the plants start to bear the fruits of their labours. So no, it's not the best of ideas to let the plants get stressed unless you want a slightly quicker crop.

[FelixLeiter]

As another thought, perhaps a little "light stress" may work to our advantage if it initiates early flower production?

oldherbaceous is quite right: it's not good for flowers to be initiated before the plant has got well established. Very early flowers are formed as a response to stress because the plant thinks its number's up. The consequence is that it then makes little effort to establish, putting everything into attempting to reproduce. You may get early fruits this way, but they are usually small and of poor quality, and the plants rarely prevail.

[Marken]

Thats sounds very logical, thanks guys. I guess its too easy to go for the early crop. I must say I have noticed this with tomatoes that form fruit before the plants have reached a good size and are then able to produce further trusses. (But its so hard to pinch out flower buds!)

[FelixLeiter]

With tomatoes, things are a bit different because they are naturally perennial, we treat them as annuals when we grow them. Squashes and their ilk, though, are annual, and so have different responses. They look at reproducing by any means in the limited time available to them. Tommies, on the other hand, can be a bit more leisurely about perpetuating themselves. If they get into a bit of trouble when they're young, it is possible for them to grow out of it.

[Marken]

But in our climate, by the time they have set fruit and then put on a new spurt of growth to become big beefy plants, won't their additional flowering and fruiting have come a bit too late? Is it better to sacrifice that early first truss in order to get more (and bigger) fruit later in the year?
Having said that, you could argue that its better to get some early fruit rather than the glut of tomatoes later on (although can you really have too many tomatoes?)

[Johnboy]

Hi Felix,
Your quote.
With tomatoes, things are a bit different because they are naturally perennial, we treat them as annuals when we grow them.
Certainly in other countries the Tomato can be grown as a perennial and most of the sites on Google emanate in the US but not in the UK.
Now we have a lot of people totally new to gardening on this forum and I feel that your comments will only lead to confusion.
Here Tomatoes are decidedly annuals and very tender ones at that.
One Google site from Florida temp zone 9B talks of sowing in the fall to get tomatoes in March which means the plant spans two calender years but that doesn't make it a perennial. A true perennial grows a full year then flowers and fruits in it's second year and then successive years and this is not what Tomatoes do.
Here they must be treated as very tender annuals!
JB.

[alan refail]

Hi Johnboy

At risk of taking this thread even further from the original question, a minor disagreement. Felix is, of course, quite right in saying that tomatoes are naturally perennial, but might have added, to avoid confusion, in their original habitats in South America.

I do agree with you that new gardeners can be misled - I used to garden with a man who was adamant that perennials were so called because you had to resow them year after year, whereas annuals came up "annually".

We, not plants, invented the terminology for our own benefit.
An annual is a plant which grows from seed to fruiting and seeding in a single growing season.
A biennial is one which grows from seed one growing season and fruits and seeds the next.
A perennial is simply any plant which lives for more than two years. Some die down in the winter and regrow, others continue above ground e.g. shrubs and trees.

You say A true perennial grows a full year then flowers and fruits in it's second year and then successive years and this is not what Tomatoes do. . I suggest this is a misleading definition.

Tomatoes are generally described as originally a "short-lived perennial" - though, of course, like other plants grown outside their natural, original habitat, they have to be treated as annuals. Runner beans are perennial (naturally/originally); we have to treat them as annuals too. But, like many other perennials, they and tomatoes flower and set seed in their first year, as do many perennial flowers such as lupins. Conversely, many perennials such as trees do not flower and set seed for many years.

Alan

[Johnboy]

Hi Alan,
In order to get a perennial to flower in it's first year you have to condition the seed with a very early sowing certainly under cover and in most cases using heat. This is called forced germination. Of course there are certain exceptions to the rule as there always is with just about anything to do with plant life.
The definition that I gave is correct if you take the seed from the packet and sow at the correct time of year, maybe under shelter, but no other artificial aids.
For your future reference Lupins should be sown in June and July which is in time for them to make a sufficient plant to combat the winter and flower the following year but not in the year of sowing. You can force germinate as early as February and get flowers the same year but at the expense of a descent plant that will give you a really good display the following year.
I really do not need you to explain to me the job of a professional propagator, the job that I have had for over thirty years.
JB.