For many years I had vegetable gardens, turning out a healthy amount of green beans, tomatoes, peppers and squash, especially zucchini.

This year I just wanted a small vegetable garden so I planted one pepper plant, one roma tomato plant and one zucchini. I put them in large planters placed in the sunny side of the house. They are planted in the best gardening soil money can buy. My husband ran a self-watering system to each of the pots, scheduled to water twice a day, once in the a.m. and again in the p.m. So I have been expecting big things.

Well, I do have big things. The tomato and pepper plants are both so tall they reach beyond the eaves on the house; and they have finally started to produce vegetables, in spite of the fact that my youngest dog loves to run behind them in search of toads and daily disconnects the watering system. In spite of it all, we are now picking the tomatoes daily and the peppers are just about ready to pick.

So what is wrong with the zucchini? We have multiple large blossoms and the plant has spread all over and out of the half barrel in which it is planted. But where are the zucchinis? Any novice gardener can grow zucchini. I have always been able to grow more zucchini than we could ever eat. But no longer.

My son, who is quite the agrarian, looked it over when he was here in mid-June, but he had no explanation. He went home and sent me a link called, “What’s wrong with my squash?” After reading it I learned that there are male blossoms and female blossoms and that it is necessary to have some of each. They even showed pictures of each. So I went on a discovery trip, invading the privacy of the errant zucchini, and found I had one female and two male blossoms. That sounds about right to me.  But as of this writing, I still continue to wait for the first sign of a successful get-together.

Does anyone out there have any clues?