Growing Courgettes

[kate100]

I am new to gardening and have planted out 2 courgette plants. The first flowers to appear were female flowers. Small courgettes have grown here, and are around 2-3 inches long, but the flowers wilted and fell off, is this normal? I thought courgettes needed male flowers in order to pollinate, but these have only just appeared. How do I know if the courgettes have pollinated? The variety is Courgette (Zucchini) and the packet says they should be harvested at 3 inches long.

[zazen999]

Just start harvesting them now. If they are supposed to be 3 inches long.....and they are 2-3 inches long - what's the problem?

Don't forget that insects carry pollen from other plants and thus they get pollenated by them.

[bazzaboy]

Kate. Welcome. If courgettes are growing they've been pollinated so no worries there. Although aficionados and gourmets (and veg shows) like to keep the flowers on it's not essential and will not influence the taste if for some reason they've become detached. Keep the plants well watered and crop as soon as the size of courgette is to your liking as others will grow with increasing frequency until autumn (you will probably tire of eating them before the plants tire of producing them! b.

[Droppey]

Out of my 5 plants only one courgette has actually grown, is there anything that I'm doing wrong?

[bazzaboy]

D, there could be lots of reasons at this stage (variety, start date, soil, position, sun/temp etc) but if you persevere (and we get some reasonable summer weather) you should get courgettes before the first frosts finish them off... Plants are programmed to try to succeed so will invariably do their darndest! b.

[Redpepper]

Hi Kate,
The flowers falling off is normal. The courgettes have pollinated if they are steadily swelling in size. I normally harvest my courgettes when they are around 6-8 inches long, but you can harvest them whenever you're ready - at 3 inches + is fine.
Although, if you let them get very big, the plant will stop producing more.

[rustylady]

I am new to gardening and have planted out 2 courgette plants. The first flowers to appear were female flowers. Small courgettes have grown here, and are around 2-3 inches long, but the flowers wilted and fell off, is this normal? I thought courgettes needed male flowers in order to pollinate, but these have only just appeared. How do I know if the courgettes have pollinated? The variety is Courgette (Zucchini) and the packet says they should be harvested at 3 inches long.

Hi Kate, yes your courgettes do need male flowers in order to grow. If you look carefully at the female flowers they already have baby courgettes behind them. If these get pollinated they will grow, but if not then they get to around 2" and then wither and fall off. I think 3" is a bit too small to harvest courgettes. I leave mine to around 5 - 6 inches (that's if I don't miss them and they turn into mini-marrows. Don't worry your plants will soon achieve a balance between male and female flowers and then you'll be wondering what to do with all those courgettes.

[sewer rat]

Hi Kate,
Although, if you let them get very big, the plant will stop producing more.

Tell that to my courgettes !!! I have 7 varieties this year - Ambassador, Defender, Taxi, Black Beauty, Lebanese, Golden Zuchinni and Rondo de Nice (about 200 plants in all) and no matter if I miss some and they get way too big, the plants keep on producing.
I try to look over and pick every three days but inevitably I will miss some - especially Defender and Ambassador - the other varieties are much easier to spot - but it's not too much of a problem with Ambassador as it can be grown to marrow size with no loss in quality.
I have been told that you can cut the end of a marrow, scoop out the seeds, fill with sugar, replace the end "lid" using pins, hang it up and put a small pinhole in the bottom end, and the sugar will ferment with the marrow flesh and produce an alcoholic rum type spirit which will drip out te hole into the bottle you strategically oplace underneath - I was gonna try this last year but now that I won't need all my veg for my boxes, I will deffo try this year - willlet you all know how it goes - unless it turns me mad or blind or both

[Lottieval]

Hi SR, Your marrow rum recipe is a blast from the past, I remember people advocating this years ago when I was a kid, can't remember what it was called then but don't think it was rum, doesn't matter tho' does it? The one thing I recall is that it became a honeypot for wasps so you had to try to make it wasp proof! Don't remember how tho'.

[butter fingers]

my courgette plant was so big before flowering that when it did the courgettes started of at 2 or 3 inches.i have had 3 fruits out of seven flowers so far. the other 2 plants are about a quarter of the size so i expect the fruits on these ones to fall of untill the plants are a bit bigger. strangely the triffid is in a small pot and other 2 share a growbag.

[kate100]

Hi, thanks for the replies. A few have the courgettes seem to have stopped growing, but when I got up this morning another 6 flowers had opened, a mixture of male and female, so hopefully I will have some courgettes soon.

[HayleyB]

I had some cross pollinated courgettes the other day, Green bush cross my yellows, came out quite an interesting lime colour - two of them, gave them to MIL.......

[rogesse]

So got to try the marrow rum SR - cheers