Butternut squash

Are you growing just one plant, or several?

The male flowers drop off whether they've managed to pass on their pollen or not ( ), the female flowers also lose their petals whether they've been fertilised or not.

So not in itself a problem unless the embro fruits have not been pollinated; they swell promisingly for a few days and then rot off from the flower end.

I have "lost" many squashes and courgettes in this way so now do my daily patrol with the little paintbrush to manually pollinate the female flowers. It works fine, the only downside being that you need to be able to do that during the day when the flowers are open!