what pollinates your luffas?

Years ago I grew successful luffas and lots of gardeners here grow them.

The last two years mine have made beautiful vines covered with flowers and have not set any fruit, four different varieties, two brand new bought seed and others saved from other folks luffas.  All germinated and grew but it seems the pollinators don't find them?

I had an abundance of other flowers attracting a variety of pollinators, lots of bumblebees and honey bees and other wild bees in the mix.

Does anyone know who does the work of pollinating them? bumblebees?

I wonder if I had too much available that they all preferred to luffa blooms?

Our garden is quite diverse and now I'm even wondering if I should row crop them in a block  so they stand out and get noticed.

This is the only crop that I grow that is not getting pollinated.

Do you suppose there is a limited number of pollinators now and I attracted the maximum for our area and they were satisfied with the mexican sunflowers, sunflowers and cosmos? with a few beans and cucumbers and melons on the side

One of my favourite you tubers did a video on this problem (though with Broad beans)


It does stand to reason that if you grow 10X the normal amount of flowers there will not be enough insects to go round in the first year. If one keeps doing that and simultaneously provides enough water and living space then the number of pollinators should go up and the problem will sort itself out. Maybe in the meanwhile one would need to be busy with a paintbrush.

Thank you Skandi!

Just watched the video and I think that's it!  I even have comfrey everywhere that I let flower this year for much the same reason...to attract more bumblebees.  I just had not thought there would be a finite number show up?

There's no going back now...I will have lots more flowers every year and hope for more pollinators.

We grew luffas last year with what seemed like to me pretty good success. We noticed black ants crawling in and around and through them. I believe ants pollinate them. We have 3 honeybee hives within 50 feet and while a luffa seemed enticing enough to catch a swarm, I never saw bees pollinating the luffas. We also have plenty of bumblebees around and I never noticed them there either.
They were really fun to grow, the kids especially loved harvesting them and shaking out the seeds.