Gardening question

[SeaRay]

I have a small raised garden in my back yard. I had several Zucchini plants that were blooming with promise.

I walked by yesterday and all the blooms were gone. This is what I saw.

We had a fellow doing some trimming in the yard and I was ready to accuse him or his helper of pruning my plants, but my wife is convinced it was cut worms. Whatever it was the stems are trimmed as neatly as if they were clipped with a printer. See the stalks with the trimmed off tops?
What y'all say? Cut worms??

[stormcloud]

I've never seen cutworms work that far off the ground. It still could be an insect we don't have. Deer are bad on okra but I've never had problems from them on squash. Looking at a picture and not a plant, it does show signs of stalk borer. Check the stalk from the ground up about eight inches and see if you see a hole with sawdust protruding from it. If you find that, pull it up. You can spend a lot of time trying to save the plant to no avail. Also, if you dusted that plant with Seven or Eight, you are applying it
way too heavy. Those products are toxic to the plant at extreme high doses. There is a three cornered alfalfa weevil that will work
higher in the plant and we do have them. I'm reaching back eight years trying to remember things I dealt with before I retired.

[S10CHEVY]

Those are the male flowers, always on long stems, where as the fruit comes off of short stems, that do have flowers, then turn into the fruit. They probably have fallen off, on their own. But if you go online, some people eat the male flowers dipped in batter and fried. Knock off one of the dead flowers, and the stem should look like the others, that looked pruned. Asked the wife, and she said that my opinion is correct. Lime works good for dusting, and a lot of bugs don't like it.

[SeaRay]

Well I hope you are correct. Hate to think my meager crop got wiped out. Time will tell.