About barren cucumbers: what to do and why, what folk remedies to water

Even abundant flowering of cucumbers does not guarantee a rich harvest, because... a large number of flowers often turn out to be empty flowers and fall off after withering without forming an ovary. Let's understand the main reasons for barren flowers on cucumbers.

A barren flower is a name given to male flowers that do not form ovaries; ovaries appear only on female flowers.

A similar problem - barren flower - is generally absent in parthenocarpic hybrids of cucumbers. They absolutely do not need pollination, because... In such plants, all the flowers are female, which means they will definitely bear fruit.

Parthenocarpic and self-pollinating cucumber varieties for an unprecedented harvest - myths and truth
Many gardeners still confuse these concepts and are “led” by the beautiful promises of sellers.

And only bee-pollinated - traditional - varieties of cucumbers can produce barren flowers, which is the main reason for a poor harvest.

Never pick off male flowers. By following our tips, you can speed up the appearance of female flowers on plants. If by the time they form, there are no barren flowers left on the cucumbers at all, this means that female flowers with an ovary simply cannot be pollinated. After pollination, male flowers always dry out and fall off on their own.

It is very easy to distinguish female flowers from male ones. Male flowers grow on stalks, and female flowers always have thickenings in the form of small cucumbers.

Is it possible to somehow influence the number of male and female flowers on cucumber vines? Yes, you can, because often a large amount of barren flowers appears on the plant due to the mistakes of the gardeners themselves. Let's look at the main reasons.

Reason 1. Poor quality cucumber seeds

By 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. It’s another matter when you decide to collect the seeds of the cucumbers you like 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.

Perhaps a large number of barren flowers on cucumbers (especially coupled with the irregular shape of the fruit) indicates that the “donor” of the seeds was itself a hybrid or cross-pollinated with a hybrid. Considering that, even if it is possible, it is quite difficult to control pollination at home, self-harvesting seeds is fraught with constant surprises.

Solution: Buy seeds from a trusted agricultural company or grow only varietal cucumbers nearby and collect seeds from them.

Farmers' advice

Experienced gardeners know what to do if there are a lot of barren flowers on cucumbers. They recommend following these rules:

The beds should be watered early in the morning or after 18:00, when it is no longer hot.
Do not loosen the soil at the base of the bush, otherwise you may damage the root.
It is advisable to spray bee-pollinated varieties of cucumbers with a sweet solution prepared from 300 ml of warm water and 1 tbsp. sugar or honey.
To ensure that there are few barren flowers on cucumbers in the greenhouse, you need to regularly open windows and doors. If the humidity is high, the pollen becomes heavy and does not disperse.
It is necessary to regularly get rid of weeds that shade the plantings and absorb nutrients from the soil.
After watering, the soil around the bushes should dry out.
To attract bees, it is recommended to plant several honey plants between the rows: thyme, lemon balm or echinacea.
If the shoots are tied to a trellis, air circulation and illumination of the plants will improve.

Advice!

To open access to the sun's rays to flowers and fruits, you need to periodically pluck a few leaves from the shoots.

When thinking about what to do when cucumbers bloom with one barren flower, you first need to determine the reason. Removing male flowers will only harm fruiting. To solve the problem, errors in planting care should be corrected. It is necessary to follow the feeding regime and prevent the plants from becoming fat. Disease prevention and timely fruit removal are important. To obtain a stable harvest, you need to take care of the plants at any stage of cultivation.

Reason 2. Sowing seeds that are too “young”

The correct planting material for cucumber is seeds with a 4-year “aging” (in extreme cases, they can be 2-3 years old). 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.

Solution: Warm up the seeds before sowing. To begin with, they are disinfected by soaking in a 1% (pink) solution of potassium permanganate for 20-30 minutes. Afterwards it is dried well and kept next to a central heating radiator for a month (the air temperature in this place should be between 25-28°C).

A faster, although more risky, way is to heat the seeds in the oven at 50-60°C for two hours. Before sowing, you can also soak the seeds in a solution of an immunomodulator (Novosil, Zircon, etc.), which will increase plant productivity.

Hybrid seeds should not be heated.

Reason 3. Improper watering of cucumbers

Let’s say you bought high-quality seeds, disinfected them just in case and germinated them before sowing, but the cucumber bed is still dominated by barren flowers. Perhaps you over-watered the cucumbers or watered them with too cold water.

Solution: Despite the fact that cucumber is a moisture-loving plant, excessive watering, especially in damp or cold weather, will not benefit it. Therefore, the frequency of watering is adjusted depending on weather conditions.

Water the cucumbers only with warm water (temperature about 25-28°C). This should be done either in the first half of the day or in the evening, after the heat of the day has subsided.

How to water cucumbers correctly for a good harvest
Do you know what your cucumbers in the greenhouse and open ground need to be crunchy and sweet? Just add water.

What to do, how to correct the situation

At the stage of the appearance of barren flowers, it is not too late to correct the situation, because flowers will form again. You can influence cucumbers to begin preparing for fruiting in the following way:

If the cause of barren flowers is the heat, try lowering the temperature in the greenhouse by applying a chalk solution to the walls and roof of the building, watering the paths with cold water, and spraying the cucumber leaves in the evenings.
In the event that flowering occurred during a cold spell, install an electric heater in the greenhouse. You can also use five-liter bottles of hot water, bricks heated in the stove, folded into buckets.
Adjust watering so that the soil under the bushes is always slightly moist. Stop watering the cucumbers with cold water if you have done so before. Warm up water for irrigation in barrels in advance.
If the planting is too dense, you will have to sacrifice some of the bushes so that the remaining cucumbers can receive enough sunlight and nutrition. Leave the strongest plants in the garden and remove the rest.
Water bushes overfed with nitrogen generously to flush out excess fertilizer from the soil. Spray cucumber leaves with a solution of boric acid (0.5 tsp per 10 liters of water). Repeat this treatment 2 more times every 5-7 days. To stimulate flowering, you can also give foliar fertilizing with potassium sulfate (10 g of powder per 5 liters of water).
If the reason for the lack of ovary is poor pollination, help your plants. Gently shake the stem during flowering or use a cotton swab to transfer pollen from male specimens to female flowers. This will help the cucumbers set fruit.

Start caring for your plantings more carefully. If you do not weed the beds, weeds take away nutrition and moisture from the crop and grow very quickly.

After watering, the beds need to be loosened - this will facilitate air access to the roots. The root system will be able to work more efficiently. If cucumbers have reduced their growth rate and are not producing female flowers, they are clearly lacking nutrients.

In this case, the plantings can be fed with mullein infusion, wood ash and nitrophoska:

Mullein infusion is prepared by mixing slurry and water in equal parts. The composition should ferment under the lid for 12-14 days. The infusion is stirred periodically. When the fertilizing is ready, it is diluted with water in the proportion of 1 part fertilizer to 10 parts water and water the bushes, adding 1 liter of fertilizer to each plant.
Ash infusion is prepared by pouring a liter jar of ash into a bucket of hot water. The composition should stand for 5-6 hours. Then it is applied at the root of plants in an amount of 1 liter. The composition can be used for spraying, diluted half with water.
Nitrophoska is a fertilizer popular among summer residents. It not only promotes the appearance of ovaries, but also improves the taste of the fruit. Cucumbers become sweeter and crispier. The fertilizer is used in accordance with the instructions, without exceeding the dosage. 30-40 g of granules are consumed per bucket of water. Apply 0.7-1 liters of fertilizer to each bush.

By providing your cucumbers with proper care, you can count on abundant flowering and fruiting. The experience gained in the struggle for the harvest will definitely come in handy in the future.

Reason 5: Cold weather

Do not forget that this culture comes from the southern regions, and the cold does not benefit it. If the summer turns out to be abnormally cold, whether you like it or not, getting female flowers on cucumbers will not be easy.

Solution: Stop watering when the air temperature is below 15°C - this will stimulate the rapid formation of female flowers.

If you have the opportunity, build a temporary shelter for your cucumber bed. To do this, install arcs and protect the plantings with any covering material.

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Reason 6. Lack of lighting

Another common reason for the formation of barren flowers on cucumbers is a lack of sunlight. If you have allocated a shaded area of the garden for your cucumber bed, you can’t count on a good harvest.

Solution: Sow cucumbers on the south-eastern, well-lit side of the plot. If the cucumbers have already been sown, you can save the situation by limiting watering and pinching the main vine. In early-ripening cucumbers, pinch the stem after 8-10 leaves, in late-ripening cucumbers - after 6-8. This will stimulate the growth of lateral shoots, on which female flowers are formed.

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Prevention of barren flowers

To avoid the formation of a large number of barren flowers on cucumbers, the following measures are used:

They protect plants from harmful insects with chemical and biological preparations.
Before sowing, the seeds are treated with a weak solution of potassium permanganate and dried.
Only self-pollinating varieties are grown in a greenhouse or greenhouse.
Plants are planted at a distance of at least 40 cm.
The beds are located on the south-eastern side of the site so that they are well lit by the sun.
When feeding cucumbers, organic fertilizers alternate with mineral ones.
We fight barren flowers by pinching long vines so that they do not thicken the plantings. You can't cut off shoots. It is better to cut them with scissors.
In rainy weather, insects do not fly, so you need to pollinate the flowers artificially.

You need to pick cucumbers carefully so as not to damage the shoot, otherwise the plant may die. It is convenient to cut greens with a knife. You need to harvest frequently - every 2 days. The formation of overgrown cucumbers should not be allowed, because they deplete the plant. The bushes will not have the strength to form new fruits, since all the nutrients are spent on the growth of greens.

Reason 7. Incorrect feeding

If you overfeed your cucumbers with nitrogen-containing fertilizers, they may begin to fatten, i.e. increase green mass without producing fruit. This happens because in such “well-fed” conditions the plant simply has no need to take care of its offspring - it is quite comfortable with an excess of nitrogen.

Solution: Follow the feeding regime. 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 per 1 sq.m.

After emergence, in the phase of two true leaves, cucumbers are fed with nitrophoska or nitroammophoska (1 tbsp per 1 liter of warm water). With the beginning of flowering, nitrogen is excluded from fertilizing. Usually, cucumbers are fed 4 times during the season.

How to feed cucumbers during flowering and fruiting to increase yield
Simple and effective recipes for your garden based on yeast, iodine, boric acid, ash and other available ingredients!

Preparations for barren flowers on cucumbers

If the suggested tips did not help you, and male flowers still predominate on cucumbers, then you can use drugs that stimulate flowering, formation and preservation of ovaries. For this purpose, drugs that stimulate fruit formation are used:

Ovary,
Bud,
Borogum,
Zelenets.

The phytohormones contained in their composition help preserve the formed ovary from falling off and deliver nutrients for its growth. The manufacturers of these drugs guarantee:

an increase in the number of female flowers and ovaries on them;
protecting them from falling off;
improved taste (juiciness, sugar content, crunch).

However, it should be remembered that when using them, due to the increase in the number of ovaries, the fruits may be small and crooked. The reason lies in the lack of nutrients for more fruits, so feeding cucumbers is also a must.

Ovary

It is an odorless white crystalline powder, highly soluble in water. The active substance is sodium salts of gibberellic acids, these are growth hormones. The drug stimulates fruit formation in unfavorable weather conditions and the absence of bees. Reduces the number of fallen flowers, accelerates the growth and ripening of fruits, and also increases phytoimmunity. All this contributes to early ripening of fruits and, as a result, increased yield.

Before use, a packet of powder is dissolved in 1.5 liters of water. The working solution is sprayed on the ground part of the plant from all sides. Spraying is carried out in the early morning or late evening in calm weather. This is due to the fact that cucumbers grow at night, and when there is less evaporation, the solution stays on the leaves longer and is better absorbed into the leaf blade. In addition, direct sunlight can cause burns on the foliage.

The solution is prepared immediately before use. The first spraying is carried out at the beginning of flowering of cucumbers, the second - during mass flowering and fruiting. It is not recommended to use the drug more than 2 times, otherwise the opposite effect is possible: premature fall of the ovaries, small fruit sizes and premature wilting.

Bud

The preparation contains, in addition to the sodium salt of gibberellic acids, humates - a complex of natural microelements, vitamins and other useful substances necessary for normal development. Among the microelements there are such important ones for development as

boron, which is necessary for the prevention of many diseases in cucumbers, prevents the ovaries from falling off and the gradual death of roots and apical buds;
copper increases resistance to disease and adverse weather conditions;
Manganese is necessary for photosynthesis and also increases the yield and taste of fruits.

The drug is packaged in a 2 g bag. Before use, it is diluted in a small amount of warm water, and then the volume is adjusted to 1 liter. To obtain a 1% solution, 1 g of the product is diluted in 1 liter of water. To obtain a 2% solution, 2 g are diluted in 1 liter of water. You can spray up to 3 times. The first time before flowering - 1% solution, later during fruit set - 2% solution.

Borogum

The drug is enriched with boron, microelements in chelated forms, the stimulant Gumi and the biofungicide Fitosporin M. Boron is responsible for the formation of female flowers, and it is its deficiency that causes the yellowing of already set fruits when they fall. Boron also increases the percentage of fruit and ovary set and their growth. All together this contributes to rapid root formation, a decrease in the number of barren flowers and the fall of the ovaries.

Apply the product by spraying on the leaf. For this, 1 tsp. The product is diluted in 300 ml of water. This amount is enough for 10 sq. m landings. Spraying is carried out before flowering, and then during flowering and fruit set.

Zelenets

This is a new unique drug – a fruit formation stimulator. In areas of risky farming, which is now almost all of Russia, it gives amazing results. Even a single spraying with Zelenets increases the yield by 2 times due to an increase in the number of fruits. Moreover, fruiting begins 5-7 days earlier and is extended by 2-3 weeks. In addition, disease resistance increases and the taste of cucumbers improves. The effect is further enhanced by the combined use of Zelenets + Obereg or Zelenets + Ovary.

To use, an ampoule with 1.5 ml of the product is diluted in 3 liters of water, for cucumbers of the female flowering type (parthenocarpic hybrids) - in 5 liters of water, mixed thoroughly. The solution is prepared immediately before use and used within the immediate future. Product consumption – 3 liters per 100 sq. m. It is not recommended to exceed the concentration of the solution!

Spray the plants once in the phase of 2-3 true leaves in the early morning or late evening in calm, warm weather.

Reason 8. Crowded crops

If you planted cucumbers too densely, you should not be surprised at the large number of empty flowers. When plants are crowded in a garden bed, this affects their development: they grow slowly, and female flowers may never appear. In addition, even when flowers with an ovary appear, it is too early to breathe a sigh of relief: dense crops can interfere with pollination.

Solution: Follow the cucumber planting pattern (40x40 cm). If the plants are already planted in the ground, all that remains is to “clear” the space between the seedlings as much as possible. To do this, you need to pinch the main vine of the seedlings. This will stop excessive growth and stimulate the appearance of female flowers.

If female flowers appear on the plants, but you notice that bees are not landing on them, you will have to pollinate the cucumbers yourself. To do this in the morning, as soon as the flowers have bloomed, tear off the corolla of the male flower and gently touch it to the stigma of the female flower. It is best to pollinate one female flower with two or three male ones.

We hope our tips will help you get a decent harvest and avoid the appearance of a large number of barren flowers.

Barren flowers on cucumbers - reasons

But it is not only the abundance of male flowers that leads to a decrease in yield. The female ovaries also begin to bloom and even the ovaries appeared, but then they turn yellow and fall off. Why does this happen? Let's look at all the possible reasons that have been recognized by both professional agronomists and experienced gardeners.

Growing conditions . Cucumber is a sun-loving plant. And with a lack of light and heat, it will have more male flowers, as nature intended. And this may be due to the fact that the greenhouse is not located in an open place, for example, but behind the house. Or the plants are planted very close to each other and the bush is not pinched.
Growing temperature is of no small importance, both daytime and nighttime. Cold and rainy weather will cause only male flowers to appear. But very hot weather (above 35ºС) makes the pollen sterile and this will also prevent the formation of ovaries.
Watering with cold water, especially of young seedlings, provokes the predominance of male flowers.

Seed age . Only fresh seeds produce more male flowers. The germination of cucumber seeds lasts up to 8 years. And the older the seeds, the more fruits they bear.
Picking male flowers . By barren flower, many gardeners mean flowers without ovaries, so they are torn off. This absolutely cannot be done and is the main mistake for reducing the yield. Without male flowers, complete pollination of female flowers is impossible. Therefore, unpollinated stamens begin to turn yellow, dry out and fall off within a few days.
Lack of insects - bees and bumblebees that pollinate plants. This is often caused by cold and rainy weather or simply by keeping the greenhouse doors closed.