Hi! I have a vegetable garden in Brooklyn (yes, the New York one!). This is a new hobby that I just started this year after joining a kayak club with enough land that there's a gardening committee. I have some good mentors helping me out but I have a squash-specific question that I need some help with!

I've been growing a kabocha (aka Japanese pumpkin). It had a near-death experience earlier this year after an insufficient hardening-off and a badly timed transplant to the bed - but made an astounding recovery & has actually managed to go to work on making a pumpkin, which is growing like sixty!

Here's the thing - there were 2 or 3 other female flowers that were still smaller buds at the time the now-pumpkin bloomed. They all proceeded to turn yellow & die. The vine produced one more bud it this one was a runt a quarter-inch long & it was turning yellow too.

In the meantime, plenty of big healthy male flowers blooming - no problems there.

So is there some sort of squash disease that only attacks the female flowers, or is this something that happens so that the vine can deliver all the goodies to the squash that's growing instead of spreading it's resources thin?

Appreciate any info people can give!

BTW I have a blog where I've posted pictures of the near-death & recovery - people might enjoy -

http://frogma.blogspot.com/2007/07/kabocha-lives-or-compare-contrast-3.html