Premature end?

[bionda75]

I was on holiday for 10 days and although I told our lovely neighbours to pick as many courgettes as they wanted - we've got 5 plants -when I got back I found 5 huge marrows. That was last Thursday and since then all the new 'baby' fruit, before their flowers are even ready to open, go a yellow-ish colour and drop off the plant when touched. I gave them a feed at the weekend to see if they'd pick up again.

So is it just the cool, wet weather of late? Or do you think they exhausted themselves producing marrows and are now on the way out?

I don't want to dig them up just yet as I had plans for the 'help-what-are-we-going-to-do-with-all-these-courgettes-glut'. So far we've had about 5/6 fruit off each plant and I've had up to 20 off one plant before.

Cheers
Lisa

[Hans Mum]

not 100% sure but think its probably this weather......leave them, when (IF!!) the weather improves they should take off again.....

[vicky]

Same happened to my mum's plants when she went on holiday...neighbours didn't like courgettes.... Hers are now recovered and producing more fruit. Also my courgettes which are picked regularly are suffering the same fate as yours, def down to the october weather!

[Nicos]

What did you feed them with??
Courgettes are VERY hungry plants ( you're best planting them in a hole filled with 4-5 spadefulls of well rotted farmyard manure)

Tomorite or better still seaweed (liqiud) manure should do the trick every few days.
Also a nice bit of sun and warmth if you can arrange it

Sounds like the energy went into all those lovely seeds in the marrow.
With all the rain we've been having a lot of the top nutrients will have been washed out of surface soil.

[Cutecumber]

They often pause, it's not unusual. Unless you have plants to replace them, feed them well and just wait.

[SlugLobber]

Mine have paused/ended. I haven't been anywhere (sob!), so I think the weather is to blame (isn't it always?!?).

[bionda75]

Thanks everyone! Seeing as it's happening to others, it's probably due to the weather. When I first planted them they out they got several decent shovels of well rotted horse poo and we fed them last weekend with a liquid tomato feed so I suppose its just a case of waiting for the Indian summer to arrive....or should I say if

[beckybee]

When my courgettes and squashes did the same thing (just turned yellow when really small and dropped off at the slightest touch) I read somewhere that it was due to them not being pollinated. This could be true at the mo due to the weather being so rubbish that the insects arent coming out to play (apart from cabbage whites but that's another story!).
I tried pollinating by hand and it seemed to work - but then again it could have just been coincidence!