Antipodean Bucket Farmer wrote:

Hi Everybody,

I have noticed that courage/zucchini plants have
beautiful but very-short-lived and sex-segragated
flowers.

This contrasts with the long-lived (but smaller - maybe
a connection?) flowers on tomato and capsicum plants.

So, it seems that courage/zucchini have a serious
number/statistic chance problem. A pollinated/mature
courage/zucchini apparently needs one female flower and
one nearby male flower open at the same time.

So, to get good numbers of pollinated female flowers
(for good yields), how many plants are needed?

So, "critical mass" would mean, how many plants are
needed to create a good chance for any individual
female flower to get pollinated (and thus make a mature
fruit.)

I hope that I am being clear. Thanks...


Clear enough. I know exactly what you mean.
We don't have too many bees around here so I often resort to hand
pollination early in the season. It's a little frustrating when there
are a couple of female zucchini blossoms but no male blossoms open that
day. I also grow a few pumpkins and I can often borrow some pollen from
them.
Later the plants get bigger and produce more flowers. (The bees start
finding them too.) At that point it seems that just 3 plants will get
most of the female blossoms pollinated. By then they are producing so
well that it's almost a blessing if a few flowers miss.

Steve