Unusual Corgettes

[geepee]

Ive grown 'Green Bush ' courgettes, excellent germination, fabulous growth , now 10/12 leaves all looking vigorous and healthy, started to grow numerous.flowers at low level......problem is ...ALL male flowers !!!! ....No sign of 'Females'....next thing ....is stems that remotely resembled females grew literally overnight to 10/15 cm long with a 'Ribbed' stem, more like a leaf stem, and then produced 2 x flowers on the end..!!!
Ive Never seen this before !! ( I would post pics but not worked out how to yet ) Any advice on both counts please .

[Plot70]

I had a double flower like that on a marrow plant.
Female flowers came first on both marrows and jazzy pumpkins.
Butternuts have plenty of tightly closed buds and no flowers yet.

[ameno]

The latter is just two male flowers fused together. It happens sometimes, nothing to worry about. The stem is thicker because it's two stems fused together.

As for no female flowers, the female flowers don't usually start until at least a week after the males, anyway, but cool, dull weather (and cool nights especially) can retard female flower production, and you then end up with all males. There's nothing you can really do about it, so you just have to wait and hope things improve.

[annie8]

I had this too including the double headed flowers. Just started getting female flowers in the last couple of weeks and plenty coming now on all but one plant. Apparently it’s pretty common early in the season.

[geepee]

Should I remove ALL the male flowers ??

[ameno]

Should I remove ALL the male flowers ??

You shouldn't removed any of them.
It won't encourage the production of female flowers, and you need the males to pollinate the females. You'll get no courgettes otherwise.

[roitelet]

Female flowers will follow

[Snoop Puss]

How are they going now, geepee?

To add a photo, there's a blue camera icon top left in the reply box. Click on that and then <Upload attachments>, which comes up below the reply box once you've clicked the camera. Find your picture, click open and then wait for it to upload. Then post reply when you're all finished. I used to have terrible trouble with the old site but I've managed a couple here, no problems. Good luck.