More on Cucumber Flowers

It's hard to believe that its been almost eight weeks since I planted my two young Cucumber Plants. In that time both plants have been growing and spreading well, despite adverse weather and a continuing onslaught from one of the worse Aphid invasions I've ever seen.

I've been seeing plenty of flowers blossoming each morning, but until this evening I've only seen male flowers appearing. This isn't unusual in a young Cucumber plant. The plants need to devote all of their energy to growing and spreading so that the plant doesn't get overstressed when the time comes to bear fruit. Typically the male flowers appear early on during this growth, so that the plant can start attracting the visitors it going to need to spread the pollen when the time comes for it to start bearing fruit.

Finally, it appears that time has come.

While trimming back and spraying leaves last night, I came across the first female flowers I've seen. The flowers appear to only be on one plant although with the interweaving vines I couldn't tell you which one. In order to identify a female flower, you need to look for a young cucumber growing behind the flower such as the one in the picture below.

In order to pollinate the female flower so that the young cucumber continues to grow, it is necessary for a pollinating visitor to land on a male flower, pick up its pollen (usually by accident as it feeds) and then spread it to a female flower.

Of course if you want to help nature along you can always spread the pollen yourself. There are two typical ways you can do this. You can use a Q-Tip to spread collect male pollen and then spread that to the female flower, or you can pick a male flower off the vine, strip it of its leaves and then gently brush the male flowers anthers against the female flowers. 

When pollination is successful, the female flower will wither and the Cucumber will start to develop. Here's another flower I found where this has already started to happen.

 Now as long as I keep the Aphids at bay, I should start to see these flowers popping up and with some luck and care, there should be fresh Cucumbers on my table soon.