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Answer

Zucchini, like most other vining crops including your cucumbers, pumpkins, squash and watermelons, require pollination for fruit set. This means pollen must be transferred from the male blooms to the female blooms. Zucchini and cucumbers have separate male and female flowers that require pollination from bees and other insects anything that interferes with pollination of the female flowers will reduce the yield, including cold temperatures, rainy weather or anything that may hamper bee activity or improper use of insecticides that kill pollinators. In both cases the lack of pollinating insects in your garden due to insecticides and other environmental factors will lead to small crops.

It is also possible do to weather, temperature or time the plant has yet to develop female flowers which regularly follow the development of male flowers by many weeks. Male zucchini flowers are slightly smaller and have longer thiner pedicel (stem), female flowers have larger flowers with shorter stouter pedicel. The flowers of the cucumber are also easy to differentiate the male are short and stout while the female flowers look as though they already have a small cucumber at pedicel.

Hope this helps, Happy gardening!

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