5 Reasons Your Pumpkin Vine Isn’t Blooming

12.06.2023 - 00:55 / gardenerspath.com / Laura Ojeda Melchor / Winter Squash

You planted your pumpkin seeds and felt that buzz of excitement when they germinated and poked through the earth.

They grew into robust vines with huge leaves, but right around the time when you expected flowers, none came.

What in the world?

If you’re wondering why your pumpkin (Cucurbita pepo) isn’t producing flowers, you’ve come to the right place.

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We list the 5 main reasons flowers might not appear when you expect them.

Let’s start problem-solving!

From the time you sowed seeds in the ground, you should expect them to germinate within seven to 10 days. About eight weeks (or 50-55 days) after that, you should start seeing flowers.

This is about halfway through the pumpkin’s 100-120 day growing time, depending on the variety.

Here’s a tip: the first flowers you see are male. The biggest visible difference between male and female flowers is that males don’t contain an ovary like females do. The ovary looks like a tiny lump just behind the flower.

Male flowers, also called staminate flowers, contain pollen on the stamen. They begin to appear on the plant about a week or two before you’ll see any female, or pistillate flowers.

The pollen’s aroma in your garden begins to attract bees from the start, ensuring that there will be pollinators around once the female flowers bloom.

Here’s another secret of the pumpkin flower that I didn’t know until I started growing my own pumpkins: they only last for a day.

The flowers unfold at dawn. In the next several hours, they open more and more until they are graceful golden basins at their peak of beauty.

These hours are critical for