Bitter squash - very poorly tummy - warning!

[northepaul]

Thanks for the warning, Kathy! (Not that I have ever managed to grow any pumpkins or squashes in 4 years of trying, grumble) Hope you are feeling better now!

[kathyd]

Thanks for the warning, Kathy! (Not that I have ever managed to grow any pumpkins or squashes in 4 years of trying, grumble) Hope you are feeling better now!

You should try growing the ornamental toxic ones Paul, they seem easy enough .

I've decided that next year I'm only growing things I can name! Lol

[darcyvuqua]

wow thats crazy hope your both feeling better now ((((((HUGS))))))

[Paulottie]

Oh now that is interesting. We had a courgette plant like that a couple of years ago....ruined a couple of meals...unfortunately they were thrown in other dishes and stirfries. Took a while to work out which plant too; as we had several...for a while the forfeit for swearing here was to taste the courgette before it went into the pan! They completely tainted everything and tasted like earwax. Don't remember being particularly ill but retching as it was so unpalletable meant I didn't swallow much. I never knew what caused it and have not come across it since.

[veggiechicken]

Bumping this thread as I've just read that bitter courgettes can cause illness and even be fatal Courgette stew kills pensioner in Heidelberg - The Local

The key bit of info:-

"Cucurbitacins have been bred out of most commercially sold seeds, Bild reports – meaning gardeners who go out and buy a seed pack to grow their own courgettes shouldn't need to worry about the toxins.

However, using seeds from previous years can be dangerous, they warn.

Gardeners should also avoid growing gourds next to ornamental breeds of pumpkin. These contain toxic substances which can end up infecting edible varieties through cross-pollination."

[alldigging]

Bumping this thread as I've just read that bitter courgettes can cause illness and even be fatal Courgette stew kills pensioner in Heidelberg - The Local

The key bit of info:-

"Cucurbitacins have been bred out of most commercially sold seeds, Bild reports – meaning gardeners who go out and buy a seed pack to grow their own courgettes shouldn't need to worry about the toxins.

However, using seeds from previous years can be dangerous, they warn.

Gardeners should also avoid growing gourds next to ornamental breeds of pumpkin. These contain toxic substances which can end up infecting edible varieties through cross-pollination."

I was just looking to see if anyone had posted this article! I had read it too!

[BUFFS]

reading this makes you wonder whether you should be "eating your greens", it seems there are more "nasties" than we used to think, I hope you are both now fully recovered, on the many trips to the loo, was it all a bit of a squash?..

[Elfeda]

we tend to taste one piece of each of these kinda veg and discard if it is bitter. somehow I have dropped this habit thinking it is onlt about the taste, but now I should start again to courgettes checking for bitterness.

[Ovce domácí]

Read the article and I wonder how our Hokkaido and courgettes will be next year with the saved seed from this year as it mentions the risks are with previous years saved seed rather than commercial packs(which is a bit convienient for big agro vs seed savers). We practiced the manual pollination method with elastic bands over the flowers to keep them pure but I guess the taste test should be practiced with any pumpkin, squash or courgette.

The opening post reminds me of the sleepness night we spent after eating a sauce made out of not home grown but Tesco's(we have them in Czech too) horse radish which must of been a bit dodgy. Wasnt too bad as we were able to get a few films in, between trips to the toilet.

[Chris11]

'The bitter taste of some fruit is caused by an over-production of plant defence chemicals called ‘cucurbitacins’. This is mainly a problem in courgettes and summer squash and is caused primarily by a mutation within the plant. The problem is more likely when plants are grown from saved seeds, where inadvertent cross-pollination may have occurred.

Affected fruit should not be eaten as it causes stomach upsets and affected plants should be removed.'

https://www.rhs.org.uk/advice/profile?PID=676

I save seeds from chillies, tomatoes etc, but have never tried to do it with courgettes because of the risk of randomly affected plants and fruits having this bitterness problem.

Does anyone know how rarely or commonly it happens?

[Lisasbolt]

Wow never heard of this before, thought at the beginning it might of been because it was an ornamental squash will keep an eye out for it in the future, thank you.
I often just chopped up a load of small bits and just chuck it into things, I will think again.

[nellie-m]

So please, gardeners - keep calm, have a cuppa, and use your common sense.

Firstly, yes, cucurbits that taste bitter shouldn't be eaten, they're poisonous. Mother Nature gave us the idea that bitter equals bad for a good reason.

Secondly, yes, ornamental gourds are Cucurbita pepo, just like our summer squashes. So yes, they will cross pollinate, and easily, within any distance that is close enough for an insect to cover.

The easy solution if you want to save seed: Hand pollinate! And properly! (meaning: make sure to select flowers in the evening, prevent them from opening before you need them, males as well as females! Hand pollinate in the morning and prevent the females from being visited by insects afterwards for another day)

Keep in mind that in order to avoid a genetic bottleneck and keep the variety healthy in the long run, you should save from at least 35 plants (50 are better) of the same squash variety, and that your squash plant will often stop producing fruit once the first ripens. So for one ripe marrow, you have to do without nice soft young courgettes. Add to that that you'll get hundreds of seeds from that single ripe fruit, multiply by 35 (or 50).... and you can see why it makes sense to buy from a nice gardening business if you only need three seeds for next year's season.

And thirdly - that newspaper mentioned is notorious for not being the most reliable source of information. Yes there was an elderly gardener who ate from a bitter courgette he had grown on his small allotment with lots of neighbouring gardeners. Yes he was taken to the hospital. Yes he died. And yes the bitter courgette was found in his stomach.

But it doesn't say whether he maybe had liver problems anyway, or was a heart patient who couldn't handle the stress and fear and got a heart attack, or had some other underlying problem that contributed to his death, which may well have been the case.

And lastly, the bitterness being caused by OLD seeds is, frankly, complete nonsense. Seeds have two options, they germinate, or they don't. A courgette will not turn into a gourd by the seed being old, just like a sweet pepper won't turn into a chili.

[Potstubsdustbins]

^^^^^^^^^^^^I do like common sense, well put Nellie

[Ovce domácí]

Keep in mind that in order to avoid a genetic bottleneck and keep the variety healthy in the long run, you should save from at least 35 plants (50 are better) of the same squash variety, and that your squash plant will often stop producing fruit once the first ripens. So for one ripe marrow, you have to do without nice soft young courgettes. Add to that that you'll get hundreds of seeds from that single ripe fruit, multiply by 35 (or 50).... and you can see why it makes sense to buy from a nice gardening business if you only need three seeds for next year's season.

For a novice seed saver, how would I go about that in practice?

We half heartedly tried seed saving on the courgettes this summer but late on with the elastic band method, we still have half a packet of seeds left from Real Seeds for next year as we only wanted no more then 4 courgette plants. Only saved tomato and tomatillo in the end, carrots and root parsely next year. Same with the onion and maybe leek.

We would need to have more then 35 courgette plants in the garden to get decent seed? Bloody hell, thats a lot of Sicilian veg stews which is the main thing we use them for.

[Elfeda]

hmm, makes sense to me but, OP doesn't confirm that seed is self saved or are planted from a seed pack.

we sually discard the cucumber seeds and use the flesh if seeds taste bitter, also I sometimes ate bitter squash like veg thinking my spices can balance the bitterness ...do not remember having any cramps...

but there is a practice in my neighbourhood to taste veg similar to courgettes and round yellow cucumbers and discard if they did taste bitter. no idea its because of possible illness or just to save the taste of the dish.