squash

[libbyloulou]

Yellow Scallop, summer squash, just had two large flowers which have now died off, but with no fruit behind them.
They are in the green house with my toms,cucumbers and courgettes, all of which are fruiting merrily. they have pollinated no problem without help.
I have never grown cucs,corgettes or squash before,i have only two sqaush,flowered 1 at a time, is this my problem ? thanks.

[smallblueplanet]

I'm sure someone else will reply, but I'd think its still early yet and cucurbits often have male flowers before female ones - and of course then you need them both together!

[TPeers]

Your two flowers sound like male from the description - females have a small squash behind them waiting to grow.

Give it time, you might give a little tomato feed to the plants to give them a boost - anything with a high potash level to encorage flowers.

Terry

[Alice]

LLL, squash start with a flush of male flowers so you will get no fruit from them. But the female flowers will be along. If you haven't grown them before, they do get very big and courgettes take up a lot of space too. You might not want to keep them in the greenhouse.
When they are soft from being in the greenhouse they can be fussy about hardening off, a summer breeze and they want to faint. When I first put them out I cover them with fleece no matter how good the weather is til they toughen up a bit.
Mine are all living outside now, with flowers on and fruit on the courgettes. Weather forecast looks a bit dodgy for next few nights, depending on who you believe. Fingers crossed - I'd hate to get caught with frost the last night in May. Would be an all time frost record for this part of the country. !

[libbyloulou]

thanks for your replies, never knew the male flowers came first, feel a bit happier now i do have two courgettes growing, about 2-3 ins long, this is why i was wondering about the squash.
Have been feeding them with my homemade crap,thought that may have had something to do with it
Never had courgette in my life, or marrow, my daughter fed courgette in baby food to her little one, she had a taste and said yeuk!
can anyone tell me what it's similar to ?thanks again. Great forum this.

p,s, cut courgette at 4 inch ?

[TEB]

Hard to say what it is similar too but pick em small under 6", we typically use them in pasta type dishes or just griddled, a greek way is to coat them in batter and deep fry them (yum), we also made a courgette souffle which was extremely yum

[Alice]

Hello LLL, hard to say what courgette tastes like. It's not strongly flavoured but does have a taste of it's own. In the same way as cucumber does. It's good as a filler, and taking up the flavour of whatever it is cooked in.
eg sauteed in butter and garlic.
There have been loads of recipes here before, and I don't doubt there will be again.

[Flummery]

I'm partial to the flavour, delicate though it is, so I just slice and steam them. Love 'em that way.