Courgettes | Growing: vegetables, fruit and herbaceous | Forum

Please consider registering
guest

Home

Forum

Growing: vegetables, fruit and herbaceous
sp_ArrowRight

Courgettes

Topic RSS

Courgettes

Tue 20-Jul-10
2:27 pm

johnmcc

Norfolk UK

Senior Class

Members

New members

Forum Posts: 27

Member Since:
Tue 20-Jul-10

Offline

We love fresh, small courgettes and have five plants from seed this year, two in the greenhouse and three in large pots outside. I feed them when I remember!

Because we had a lot of female flowers that weren't getting fertilised, I've been darting about with a camel hair brush each morning transferring pollen from male to female (pref on a different plant). But many of those I've fertilised have a very thin top half and a normally developed lower half - ie, only the lower half of the fruit is developing. Anyone know what I'm doing wrong? (the naturally fertilised ones are fine and tasty, BTW).

What's wrong with the politics of envy, anyway?

Tue 20-Jul-10
7:56 pm

JoannaS

Latvia

Supreme Being

Members

Forum Posts: 4800

Member Since:
Mon 21-Sep-09

Offline

Must admit to having never bothered, we are always inundated enough by the time they get around to producing doh

Blog: thejourneytosomewhere.blogspot.com

Tue 20-Jul-10
10:52 pm

mike.

Coventry

Councillor

Members

Forum Posts: 1265

Member Since:
Wed 30-Dec-09

Offline

I've been leaving my courgettes to pollinate naturally and I'm finding that they're not always developing properly either. Very often the bit closest to the stalk is ok but the tip of the courgette is very thin or a bit spongy. This is in addition to the ones which don't get pollinated and start to rot before they develop.

Visit my blog for food, drink, photography and hamsters.

Tue 20-Jul-10
11:00 pm

danast

Argyll, Scotland

Supreme Being

Members

Forum Posts: 10232

Member Since:
Thu 24-Sep-09

Offline

wave Me too, Bob. Exactly the same, although I have lots that are OK.

Old teachers never die, they just lose their class

Wed 21-Jul-10
12:28 pm

johnmcc

Norfolk UK

Senior Class

Members

New members

Forum Posts: 27

Member Since:
Tue 20-Jul-10

Offline

I'm not the only one then. Phew!

What's wrong with the politics of envy, anyway?

Wed 21-Jul-10
3:29 pm

KateUK

Councillor

Members

Forum Posts: 1829

Member Since:
Tue 22-Sep-09

Offline

If you remove the pollenny bit from the male flower and shove it into the female bit on the lady flowers surprised ( I'm sure you all know exactly what I mean) it usually works really well and gives perfect courgettes.