Catastrophic zucchini death!

[bario1]

Hi, my yellow courgette was doing great, a metre and a half across and producing loads of lovely fruit, up until yesterday when I found it literally in two bits like it had collapsed on itself... inside the stem looks all manky and rotten. Anyone know what caused this? Can't see any maggots/insects...

[Bigmallly]

How gutting Bario, might not be as bad as it looks, Remove all the bad stuff,pick the little courgettes & fingers crossed more may grow.

[Penellype]

The only thing I can find that looks remotely like this is damage by squash borer, but these are supposed to only be a problem in America. One of the references I looked at said that if you bury the damaged parts of the stems they will grow new roots and the plants should survive. Its worth a try.

Squash vine borer - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

[Potstubsdustbins]

Does this sound familiar The brown slimy rot attacks the stems, the leaves wilt and the plant collapses.

If so you may be looking at a bacterial canker.

[bario1]

Where did you read that, Pots? Any mention i find of canker is usually related to trees. The only other thing that looks possible is veticillium wilt, which I'm really hoping it isn't as it's infectious and the RHS recommends grassing the area for 15 years!!
The weird thing is there was no wilting - it's just turned to goo overnight. Even the bit that had fallen off wasn't really wilted!

[teakdesk]

At the allotment we have a fox who regularly tramples over crops, dragging string lines along with it. I am sure it has used my coldframe to sleep in and lain in my trench I'm trying for the leeks.

Yesterday I found a courgette plant "flat" similar to yours. I'm sure the fox had walked over it as some leaves were bent backwards.

I suspect it did the damage trying to get under the larger leaves of the squash next to it.


Any chance an animal damaged your plant and the mankyness you see on the stems is just normal?

[Potstubsdustbins]

The first sign of verticillium wilts is yellowing of the lower leaves this then moves up the plant.

Goggle basal stem rot and have a look at that.

[bario1]

Teakdesk I did wonder if a fox or cat had trampled it, but it seems unlikely since it is in a raised bed made of 4 pallets. Besides, the inside is so rotten that it literally falls apart when touched. It looks similar to what happened to one of my cucumbers earlier in the season:

[bario1]

If I ever start a heavy metal band it's going to be called 'Catastrophic Zucchini Death' or 'Bacterial Canker'.

[Potstubsdustbins]

Cumbers & courgettes are the same family and suffer from the same problems, that cumber certainly looks like basal stem rot/canker. Over watering doesn't help particularly with cumbers.

[marchogaeth]

It definitely looks like over watering around the stem. Plants like cuc's and courgettes need lots of water but hate having wet stems. I bury plastic bottles (upside down, bottom cut off) around my plants and water through these once the plants are established. The added bonus it that when you feed you can apply this near the stem and it doesn't get washed away with gallons of water. For what it's worth I use a bottle inside a bottle to create a drip system in the tunnel for things like tomatoes/aubs etc.