Squashies Dropping Flowers!

This is my first vegetable garden so if I am doing something obviously verboten, be kind! Can anyone help me with this? I had beautiful full flowers and then they start to turn grey and just drop right off! Actually, everyone looks kind of sickly despite buying excellent compost/soil mix for my raised beds. I have been giving everyone fish emulsion, Maxsea fertilizer, and finally compost tea. I have experimented early on with straw mulch (got hay by accident and now have little hay shoots once in awhile), but took the hay mulch off when I saw mildew growing underneath it. Not sure I really need mulch as it is VERY warm here. Also, I have been sprinkling Sluggo lightly around but that too molds (Aaaarrrrrggggghhhhhhh!) so I removed it. I am not sure if the moldy soil was because of the aforementioned or the unusually muggy weather or a combination/'series of unfortunate events'.

I sprayed with compost tea last night. That was the first time I did it with 'well made' compost tea, and this morning everything in my garden seems to be humming a tune! I followed an aerated recipe put forth on the organic gardening forum. Before that I got anxious and just soaked my compost in a bucket, strained and poured. I did it only on a few of my garden plants first to see what would happen and they perked right up! So I gave my newly emerging veggies some too (this was about three weeks ago). But my vegetable garden has been struggling since way before that; day one it seems. Will I ever have any veggies?

The first dozen or so flowers alway drop on the squash as they are usually male and the female flowers haven't come up yet. don't worry, they squash will be along soon.

Thank you for your reply...I'll try to stop the panic...;-)

Despite what is said about how "easy" squash is to grow, it's a roll of the dice. Hang in there.

You'll be able to tell the female flowers when they come because they'll have a miniature "squash" at the base of the flower. The male flowers are just on normal stems. Pollination will be important. If you don't have a lot of bees, you might want to consider hand pollination with a q-tip or something like that.

Oh, thank you for the replies...

Could it really be that simple!!!??? That would be nice. Yes, I have a very large flowering shrub two feet from my veggie garden which is absolutely SWARMING with bees of all kinds. So I would assume they have made it over to the other flowers. But you know what happens when we 'assume'.

The only other issue is that from minute one my Marigolds have done the same. I am trying out companion/organic gardening and planted some fine looking Marigolds at the onset of my vegetable endeavor. But they exhibit the same infuriating behavior: the flower shrivels at the base of the bud as if it is being strangled, and then the bud falls over or off. I think there is something with my soil? not enough aeration? Hence the mildew. I have a few plants in which leaves that are a bit sickly looking despite my efforts mentioned in the first posting. In this photo everything is kind of blown out from the Sun, but you can sort of see the Marigolds which are mostly coming back.

It is just that some of the flowers which drop look as though they were sucked dry from the base of the flower. And it is also on the Cosmos, as well as other (but not all) plants. Am I cursed?

As Kanita said, squash always starts out with male flowers to get the insects used to coming by and checking out the blooms. They have very skinny long stems and there seems to be a long time before the "girls" show up. The flowers look kind of stumpy when they are female and the "stem" is a tiny squash.. very cute. You will lose some of those also but as cmoxen says you can alway run out in the am and transfer some pollen yourself!

Hmm... I got females first on my squash and my cukes, and no males to pollinate them.

really?? How odd! Are there varieties that are totally male or female???

No, but lots of cukes and a few squash are all female. All are hybrids.

The male squash blossoms are the ones used for stuffing & cooking.
If there are no female blossoms yet, you might try harvesting the male blossoms for your first meal from the plant.
Here's a link to some suggestions on how to prepare them:

http://www.strauscom.com/farmfresh/ffsblos.html

I got two female blossoms with no males (the tiny fruits proved edible though; I picked them just as the blossoms were dying). Now that they're gone, I have two male blossoms, and no females. Harumpf.

hmm.. Larisa.. maybe you could save some pollen from the boys and wait to see if some more girls appear?

What's the shelf-life of pollen ? :)

Put it in the fridge on a damp q-tip, should last for a good week or so.

You can freeze it also if you think you might keep it longer than that. More than a few days I would freeze

Cool, thanks! I'll put a blossom in the fridge.
Soo, Jazzpunkin asked if there were varieties that bloom all male or all female; I'd like to repeat that question. I've got a zucchini that's had 5 female blossoms so far, no males at all. I only planted the one zucchini; I don't have that much space and didn't want too many zucchinis--at this rate, I don't need to worry about that...

There are zukes that are parthenocarpic. Produce fruits without pollination. There are not many of them like cucumbers. Partenon and Sure Thing are the two I can think of at the moment.

really? WOW! Ok, I'll wait and see what happens.
Thanks,
Larisa

Can anyone tell me why zucchini and summer squash are mushy when just an inch or two long? Is there anything I can do?
Deb NJ

Do they start out mushy, or get mushy after the blossom drops off?