Dying immature female flowers
- Subject: Dying immature female flowers
- From: r*@dos.nortel.com
- Date: Sun, 11 Jul 99 22:32:27 EDT
Howdee folks,
On 7/7, I installed a soaker hose on my two
AG plants, plus sprayed lightly with Sevin in preparation
for an out of town trip.
I cut off and removed a dozen open flowers and then sprayed,
so no bees would be hurt.
I used a 16 oz. finger-pumped spritzer/sprayer; I mention
this because I want to indicate that I did not
drench the plants. My problem is that the
next time I examined the plants, 4 days later, all of the
pea to marble-sized budding (yet to open) female flowers were dying. The
little pumpkin at the base appeared slightly brownish
and wrinkled on top, and it and the flower was clearly
dying, never going to open. My question is... did the
Sevin do this? Did the soaker hose do this? I carefully
avoided spraying Sevin on the tender growing tips of the vines,
but didn't pay particular attention to the immature flowers.
Both plants still appear very vigorous and healthy, unaffected
by the Sevin; it's just that the existing females are dying;
the newly-developing females (that weren't around when I
sprayed?) are looking fine. The one fruit I have set
from 7/4 seems alive too, baseball-sized.
Both my plants were similarly affected.
So has anyone seen anything like this, the dying females,
with newer ones ok? Any advice will be appreciated.
Will Sevin affect fruit or unopened flowers?
I noticed my first squash vine borer moths today, too- could
they have singled out the immature females and done this while
I was gone?
-----------
Rick Inzero
near Rochester, NY
rdi@cci.com
Did I see bees? I did.
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