Clever management during the flowering period of zucchini is the key to achieving high yields
As the saying goes: a zucchini has only one flower, and you only look at the fruit on the vine. Only with high yields can zucchini be profitable, and how many fruits set depends mainly on the number and quality of pollinated female flowers. Based on practical growing experience: to increase income, you need clever management, and the key points are doing a good job of hand pollination and correctly using growth regulators in production.
1. Careful tending and management, carrying out hand pollination.
The first flower that opens on a zucchini is generally a female flower, and the second is generally a male flower. Female and male flowers usually open between 4 and 6 in the morning, and by 9 to 11 in the morning the male flowers can be seen opening up; this is the best time for pollination. When pollinating, first check whether the male flower has produced pollen. You can touch the male flower's stamen with your finger; if you find yellow powder on your fingertip, it has mature pollen. Then pick the male flower, remove the petals, and gently rub it against the female flower's stigma so that the stigma is evenly pollinated; otherwise it easily grows into a deformed fruit.
2. Seize the right moment and cleverly use growth regulators to coat the flowers.
When the air humidity is relatively high, or there are no male flowers in the greenhouse, and every leaf axil of each vine bears a female flower, this situation is one leaf, one fruit. At this point, growth regulators are needed to promote fruit set. The growth regulators commonly used for fruit set now mainly include 2,4-D or Baoguoning, etc.
When using a growth regulator to coat young fruits, choose a sunny day and apply it between 9 and 10 in the morning. The specific method: dip a writing brush in the solution, then with the first stroke quickly apply it once to the stigma, and with the second stroke gently apply one stroke along the young fruit from the tail end toward the direction of the fruit stalk, and that is done. Also note: first, when using the growth regulator, use a lower concentration when the temperature is high, and a slightly higher concentration when the temperature is low; second, if the zucchini vines are growing vigorously, the concentration used should be higher, and if the growth is weak, the concentration should be lower. When using the growth regulator, an appropriate amount of red, blue, or black color should be added as a colored marker to distinguish whether a flower has been coated or not (a flower can only be coated once and should not be coated repeatedly or with extra strokes). The best time to coat is when the female flower opens and the day before. It should be noted that you should not do this on cloudy and rainy days or in the afternoon, because doing so first gives poor results, second leads to too low a fruit-setting rate, and in addition it is especially likely to produce deformed fruits.
After use, vegetable growers reported that, comparing 2,4-D with Baoguoning, the safety of Baoguoning is better than that of 2,4-D. On the one hand, it is less prone to causing phytotoxicity and deformed fruits; on the other hand, Baoguoning itself contains medicinal ingredients for controlling gray mold, which can not only promote early fruit set after flower coating, but also control the occurrence of gray mold.