Courgettes in planters

[Maffie]

I had good sucess with them in pots last year. It was hard to support due to the weight of the fruit. It needed lots of watering and I mean alot! I fed it with a multi purpose food suitable for veg and did that twice weekly when the fruits were coming.

If they only flower i'd suggest taking a male flower and gently rubbing it against the female flowers (female flowers have fruits behind them) I was told to do this and we ate quite a few courgettes

[allotmentlady]

hmmmm i would tend to use a big pot or tub and feed them well. I leave mine to grow in a raised bed, i always get lovely courgettes.

[hathor]

Just a thought, but wouldn't it be an idea to make up a self-watering container for courgettes? Most of my containers are SWCs - I made my own - and it took a lot of the stress out of worrying whether tomatoes etc had enough water/food.
Basically, the container has its own reservoir, so the plants' roots take up whatever they want whenever they want, and all I have to do is keep it topped up. If you want to get scientific, you can tailor the capacity of the reservoir to match the likely needs of the plant, taking into account how often you can be available to top it up. I believe a tomato plant, for example, in full fruit, can use up to a gallon a day!
Watering/feeding this way also irons out the drought/flood cycle, so the plants have pretty much constant conditions, too. And you don't wash anything out of the pot by top-watering, or have to provide "saucers" for pots.

[selfraising]

I grew courgette One Ball in containers and it did very well. I added plenty of manure in with the compost. As has already been said, they need lots of water. I put a cut off plastic bottle next to mine so the water would go straight to the roots.

[Victoria26]

I grew courgette last year in a container in partial shade. Got about a dozen cougettes off of 1 plant but unfortunatly I didnt know how to cook or use them so they ended up spoiled!

I never did anything special to them - Maybe feed them once a fortnight and neglected it rest of the time. This year I'm growing 2 Diamante plants from seed so i'll see how they turn out.

I'll need to keep an eye on this thread... fingers crossed for everyone.

[Alice]

Oh Victoria ! What a shame you didn't eat your courgettes. I hope you'll get plenty of ideas for cooking them this year. The simplest way to cook them is cut them into slices and fry them in butter, add garlic and herbs if you like. And you can switch up some eggs and pour the egg over the cooking courgettes to make a fritata.
For all the recipes you'll ever need see the link.
Courgette Recipes at Food Down Under Recipe Database

[Victoria26]

Jeez Alice! Thats a shed load of cougette recipes! Wow! Thanks for that. No excuses this year!!

[amandaandherveg]

Victoria, the Chocolate Courgette Cake that lots of us were making last year was very, very tasty. Squashy texture but like a pudding, yum!

[Emmylou]

They do like lots of horse poo!! Grow well on top of a heap like marrows.

[windowsillqueen]

I've just planted 4 black beauty courgettes. They are currently in little flower pots but I will move them into the biggest pots I can get my hands on soon. I'd better get my hands on a load of horse poo then....

[snakeshack]

I grew 2 zucchini in 40 cm pots last year underneath the wall basket my gartenperle tomatos were in so they got the run off every time I watered and fed the tomatos.
had about 20 per plant until the mildew took them.
will be planting up the lottie this year though

[HayleyB]

I had hundreds of fruit last year from 25 plants. I planted out on a manured bed and they loved it, kept them well watered and was inundated, don't mind this year as they're gonna be sold, so I'll be making the mistake of planting to many again - but not moaning this time of what the hell to do with them all