It's impolrtant to tell the boys from the girls with zucchini

Q: What is wrong with my zucchini plants? Every year I get many blooms, but the blooms fall off like they’ve been severed at the stem. I’m at a loss as to what’s going on. — Tom Wilder, Roswell

A: What is going on is that zucchini has male and female flowers on the same plant. Typically the male flowers appear about two weeks before the females appear.

You need to be able to distinguish between the boys and the girls. They are easy to tell apart. The male blooms are connected to the main stem of the plant by a simple, short green stem. Female blooms will have a tiny squash connecting them to the main stem.

The solution to your problem is easy: Just wait a while. The female blooms will appear soon. If the fruit that follows is misshapen, you’re getting incomplete pollination. Bees must visit the male and female blooms six to eight times before full pollination occurs.

If bees are scarce, hand pollination can be done by gently jiggling a cotton swab alternately in male and female flowers. Humming “I’m in the Mood for Love” or “Some Enchanted Evening” while you work is said to help as well.

Q: We have an infestation of spurweed. We would love to know how to get rid of the existing weed. — Larry and Merle Crowe, email

A: Spurweed, aka burweed, is a winter annual weed. It is a tiny plant with parsley-like leaves and grows close to the soil line. Spurweed seed germinates in the fall and winter months.. During the winter, spurweed remains small, low-growing and barely noticeable.

In late winter, spurweed blooms are tiny white flowers. In the spring when temperatures begin to increase, the pollinated flowers of lawn spurweed begin to set fruit. As the fruit matures in mid to late spring, the seed in the fruiting structures develop spines, and when the fruit dries, the spines become sharp enough to penetrate bare skin

You can prevent spurweed by keeping a healthy lawn. A healthy lawn competes for water, nutrients, and space. Fertilizing, irrigation, and mowing height can encourage a healthy lawn. If your lawn is bermudagrass or zoysiagrass, it may be helpful to adjust your mower to its highest cutting height for the last cut of the season in fall, to ensure the thickest canopy is present over winter. Spurweed can be easily controlled chemically during the winter months of December, January, and February with a preemergent herbicide that contains simazine or isoxaben.

I think your best option now is to spray a postemergent herbicide that contains some combination of 2,4-D, dicamba, MCPP, or quinclorac. The problem with spraying now is the weed may die, but it has flowered and set fruit already. The best month is March, before flowering