Help! Garden is not producing at all!

Hi y'all! I'm Stacie and this is my first SFG. I got the book and followed all the steps. I am learning as I go.

My tomatoes, cucumbers, squash, and okra are all growing beautifully. Large beautiful plants, only no fruits or veggies! They are covered with blossoms and the blossoms all dry up and fall off with out making fruit.

I can't figure out why everything is growing, but nothing is producing. Please help!

Your apparently black thumbed friend~

My guess would be that either the temperatures or humidity are too high for the flowers to pollinate, or else you don't have enough bees or insects to do the pollinating.

Bees don't work as much in hot weather, either. You might try shaking your plants or using a small watercolor brush or q-tip to hand pollinate the flowers yourself - in the morning just dab pollen from one newly-opened flower to another. Squash and cucumbers have separate male and female flowers - the females have a tiny fruit growing before the flower, while male flowers have just a stem and flower. Squash and cucumbers typically have a flush of male flowers before they begin producing females flowers, so you may have to wait a couple of weeks before both are produced at the same time.

If the flowers are drying up because of high temperature or humidity, they should do fine once the weather moderates. Consistently high temps above the mid-80's can cause tomato blossom drop, and even a day of 100+ temps can do it. High night temps are bad too, because the plant doesn't have a chance to recover from the stress of the day's heat. If the humidity is high, do not get water on the leaves during the day, it just makes it worse.

There are tomato hybrids bred specifically to handle high heat and humidity, but I've never tried growing them. I usually get mine out in time to get a fruit set before the temps get too high, and those continue to ripen during the hot summer, then more flowers set during the odd summer days when the weather cools.

Hang in there!

@ander217 - Thanks for the information. I checked up on some of the things you mentioned. I see that my cucumber plants are covered in male flowers at this point. Not a female anywhere, so maybe there is still hope.

The tomatoes may be suffering from the heat. I've been dabbing at them with a paint brush; I've tried watering with apple juice; I tried watering with water mixed with epsom salts, I've shaken them .... They just don't want to make tomatoes. : (

The squash seems to have some female flowers. I finally caught one open this morning to try to pollenate with the male flower.

I'm finding that gardening has a steep learning curve and I appreciate all the information I can get! THAnks!!!!