How to Increase the Number of Female Flowers in Squash Plants

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By Kim Vincent
eHow Contributing Writer

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Squash plants are monecious, meaning they have both the male and female flowers on the plant. Bees are generally required to help the male flowers pollinate the female flowers so that the plant will bear more squash. The flowers open early in the morning and close when the sun goes down, never reopening. Increasing the number of female flowers on squash plants is difficult but can be done with industrial-quality herbicides that contain ethephon.

Difficulty: Moderate

Instructions

Things You'll Need:

Protective goggles
Protective gloves
Long-sleeved shirt
Ethephon herbicide
Spray bottle

Ethephon Herbicide

Step 1

Care for the squash plant properly to ensure its health prior to treatment. This means you need to make certain it gets adequate sun, water and nutrients.
Step 2

Register your use of ethephon with the Environmental Protection Agency, complying with PR Notice 86-5 by the EPA. This is a controlled herbicide.
Step 3

Don protective goggles, gloves and long-sleeved apparel to protect your eyes and skin from irritation due to ethephon exposure.
Step 4

Mix the ethephon according to the manufacturer's instructions.
Step 5

Spray the plant with ethephon herbicide when it begins to bud. Ethephon is metabolized fairly quickly by the squash plant as ethylene. A study by Hume and Lovell at the University of Auckland's Department of Botany showed that all secondary bud nodes which formed in the first 7 days after treatment became female flowers.

Tips & Warnings

The more bee visitation a squash plant has, the more fruit it bears, as noted by Delaplane and Mayer in "Crop Pollination By Bees."
Following manufacturer's instructions precisely is essential in complying with the EPA guidelines for this herbicide.