Those are male flowers. It's pretty normal for the plants to start to produce those first, and then the female flowers, which grow into a pumpkin, will start in about 2 weeks, roughly, after the first male flowers open. It varies somewhat from variety to variety on this. And yes, it's normal for the male flowers to only last the one day. Hand pollination won't help, because there isn't any fruit yet to pollinate. You'll recognize the female flowers when they form -- they have a baby pumpkin at the base of the flower. Until then, you can pick the male flowers to cook with if you want, as they serve no real purpose at this point.

There isn't much you can do beyond what you're doing. Just keep watering and you should be fine. I assume you probably don't get frost for at least a couple of months yet? If so, you should have time to get pumpkins yet. The extreme heat may have contributed to the plants not getting female blossoms yet, but that is changing now for you as well.

Yes, you can keep burying the stems, they will root in and help the plants grow better, and act as an insurance policy of sorts against vine borers in the main stem. MG weekly is probably fine, too, but you might want to seek out a formula that isn't super high in Nitrogen (the first number) -- something like a tomato formula would be good, higher in P and K, the second and third numbers. But, if you don't have that, plain old 20-20-20 will work.

Good luck.

Ah, very good, thanks for the re-assurance! I was getting worried that I wouldn't get any pumkins. So once I find the female flowers starting to open up, should I hand pollinate those? We get wind every single day here, so I'm hoping that would be enough for pollination.

Our first frost usn't until Nov. 15th, so I still have 2 more months (that's why I planted them so late). What I'm worried about is only getting tiny pumkins due to only 5 hours of sun each day. Doesn't lack of sun contribute to miniature fruit?

I'll look for a better fertilizer...why don't you want a high N fertilizer? Does the N mean bigger, better leaves? Are P and K to produce bigger fruit? Thanks so much for the help!

High nitrogen produces lots of lovely green leaves and few flowers. The components of fertilizer are
Nitrogen--it puts the green in things.
Phospherous--promotes strong roots and stems and flowers.
Potash--It promotes an over all healthy plant.

You need them all for healthy plants, that's why you use a balanced fertilizer for veggies and flowers. Now if you were growing grass you'd want one high in nitrogen.

You don't have to hand pollinate unless when you do get female flowers the pumpkins start falling off. It might be better if they got more sun but it's too late for that now. Not many of us know what growing is like in your climate, so I say just carry on and see what happens

Thanks for the info, I'll look for a fertilizer that has higher P and K. It seems like you want higher N fertilizer during the spring when everything is getting started growing, then once they flower you want higher P to get bigger fruit...is that correct?

I noticed my lawn fertilizer is pretty all N, with a little P and K, so that makes sense.

One more question, do I need to cut the end of the vine off to stop it from growing longer? I heard somewhere that you want to chop the end of the vine off, once pumkins start to show. Maybe that's only for giant pumpkins or something?

Anybody know?

With my pumpkins, I just put the plants in the ground and leave them alone, other than making sure they have water.

The clever little things seem to be able to figure out how to grow and form pumpkins all on their own. So take a deep breath and stop fussing over them so much. It'll be OK.

Alrighty, I'll quite worrying about them. Just my first year of gardening, so I want to make sure I do it all right.