Courgettes going yellow?

[RobPro]

Hello, new here and new to vegetable growing... My girlfriend and I bought a house last year and have always wanted to get into it. Luckily the house has a polytunnel, 3 greenhouses and we just made 4 raised beds so we have a lot going on!

The courgettes are the first veg we are harvesting as they are in the polytunnel, we have about 25 plants or so (yes, we wont have as many next year haha).

I am starting to see a lot of courgettes are 'failing' at 2-3 inches long and starting to go yellow, what is the cause of this please as it is accounting for a lot of lost courgettes now!

Mainly with the Diamant variety. Our Fruit Rond are doing OK.

I've added some pics, thanks!

[RobPro]

[RobPro]

OK, it wont let me edit my posts and my images wont show up

https://imgur.com/0XqPfaq

https://imgur.com/bRYsHjW

[bario1]

Welcome Rob, you won't be able to attach pictures to your posts until you've made 10 posts - forum rules and all that.
Sounds like your courgettes are aborting because they haven't been pollinated - happens a lot at the start of the season. They should sort themselves out soon, and then you'll be wishing 80% would fall off, because with 25 plants you'll be filling a bathtub with courgettes every other day! :

[RobPro]

Welcome Rob, you won't be able to attach pictures to your posts until you've made 10 posts - forum rules and all that.
Sounds like your courgettes are aborting because they haven't been pollinated - happens a lot at the start of the season. They should sort themselves out soon, and then you'll be wishing 80% would fall off, because with 25 plants you'll be filling a bathtub with courgettes every other day! :

Ah OK thanks! Is that because bees cant find way into polytunnel? We have a large window piece lifted up so they can come in. Yes, we started to realise the quantity when they started to appear, combined with I think Monty on Gardeners World on the weekend or somewhere, saying 1 plant per person would be suffice!

Well this is an experimental year really! Already had stuffed round courgettes, courgette fritters and courgette bread! Courgetti coming up this week. Perhaps we wont want to grow them at all next year!

[Snoop Puss]

You can hand pollinate courgettes quite successfully. Take a male flower and put it inside a female so that there is a transfer of pollen. There's usually enough pollen in a single male flower to pollinate more than one female flower. If you wish to be a bit more delicate about it, you can use a paintbrush to transfer pollen.

Given the number of plants you have, you may be grateful that not every female flower gets pollinated!

Good luck.

[ameno]

I find insects to be very poor pollinators of courgettes (and squashes), even outside, and always have to hand-pollinate mine. They are apparently pollinated by a specific species of bee in their native range, so this may be why our bees often don't do a very good job.

[Derbydal]

Hi rob they look better than mine ! I dont have flowers on mine so your doing well , you do need to grow lots of gourgettes just to keep unwanted visitors and relatives away from the door ! if you keep giving them a bag of gourgettes they dont call round so often and runner beans are a good supstitute if by some strange reason you don't have any gourgettes to hand ! lol atb Dal

[SarrissUK]

haha yeah don't worry, you'll have no friends at all at the end of the summer

[Ognen09]

Hi rob they look better than mine ! I dont have flowers on mine so your doing well , you do need to grow lots of gourgettes just to keep unwanted visitors and relatives away from the door ! if you keep giving them a bag of gourgettes they dont call round so often and runner beans are a good supstitute if by some strange reason you don't have any gourgettes to hand ! lol atb Dal

Ha! First year my son and I grew courgettes we had about 20 odd plants and ended up having them with nearly every meal! Got to the point that when invited to dinner friends would only come on the understanding there were no courgettes!!