Hey everyone. Welcome back to the show. Today we're taking a question from

Joe Thomas. What's going on Joe? What's growing on Joe? Here is the question.

Well first of all he, absolutely love your podcast.

Joe, you're too kind.

Thank you so much.

So he says my zucchini and pumpkin vines have about a 50 to one ratio of shoots

with male flowers to fruit, but otherwise seem seem healthy and what he's saying by

shoots with male flowers to fruit what he's meaning is male flowers to

female flowers. What do my zucchini plants need that I am not giving them?

So here is something that is a very common question.

These are some tricky plants to grow.

Now, zucchini is we consider vegetables because basically a vegetable, in my

opinion at least, is anything not sweet that is a plant that we eat.

Although botanically speaking, as a gardener, a zucchini is a fruit and Joe obviously knows that he called it a fruit

So we have to understand how the plant works and is this a problem if there are more male flowers than female flowers?

So let's go ahead and talk about zucchini blossoms.

First of all, when it comes to zucchini, the male flowers are going to show up first on the plant

and they are going to be more plentiful. Now if you only have male flowers then it can be an environmental issue.

So really make sure that you're giving your plant

the conditions that it needs to thrive.

So if it's maybe a particularly hot summer or particularly dry, maybe too wet,

there's a lot of different things that can create an imbalance in the production of the

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