Depressed corgettes

[Batty in Battersea]

My corgettes are not very happy. They are in a big pot on my balcony and are flowering away but every flower ends up shivelling up in either a dry or a soggy mess and falling off. so .. no fruits. What have I done? I water him every day or so, put some seaweed fertiliser on him every week or so and squash all the aphids that get close. I'm confused.

[MKG]

Hmmm ...odd. I thought about it and went outside to check mine. When the flowers appear, there is already a tiny embryonic courgette sitting behind them. So even if the flowers fall off (which a couple of mine have), the courgette should be recognisably there. Did you start your watering and feeding regime, by any chance, as soon as you got the plants into the pot?

[JR]

I did them 2 years in a row in pots and growbags (large ones), I got a few tiny ones but the plants went off colour, yellow then brown and died. The ones (5 plants) in the plot in the ground with horse manure have already produced about a dozen large fruits and more on the way. I think you cant get enough water to the plant if its in a pot (unless is huge I suppose).

[Annpan]

I have many flowers on my courgettes but not much fruit - should I be feeding them more? I haven't fed them at all yet actually but they were planted on a spade full of dung... is that woefully inadequate?
Also I am protecting mine under some good old fashioned barn cloches... perhaps I should be watering them more than once a week?

[Batty in Battersea]

I cant see anything resembling a baby courgette behind the flowers. I did only start with the fertiliser once the buds appeared. Should I have started earlier?
I have got an automatic watering system and also top them up with the watering can if the soil looks a bit dry, so I dont think it is an under-watering thing. The leaves are still green with a sort of yellow/white sheen to them when they get old.

[JR]

Water them with with a good soak a few times a week at the roots, I know it will rain on the leaves but they dont like to get wet. feed every couple of weeks it what they say, but to be honest I have not given mine any extra that the mail sack full of manure when I planted tem in.

We picked one 10 inches long and 2.5 to 3 inches round (across the middle top to bottom) last weekend.

[MKG]

Well, I went out again and looked more closely. In fact, I have two distinct kinds of flowering stems - ones with the embryonic courgettes behind them and others with just plain, thin stems behind them. Male and female, possibly? I think I need to do some looking up. I'm beginning to wonder if there are any conditions which would favour one kind of stem over another, which might explain Batty's problem.

[red]

yeh the female flowers have little courgettes behind them. the male dont. they ahve to fertilize to develop. Insects do the deed, I understand. Usually get male flowers to start.. dunno why...... usually sorts itself out after that.

[MKG]

Yep - just found that out on Google. OK - so Batty's problem appears to be that the plants are producing only male flowers.

[Batty in Battersea]

Ah, that makes sense, maybe I have to just wait for the girls to get ready.. so to speak.

Thanks

[Thomzo]

Given your location you mind find that they don't get pollenised properly. It might be worth doing it by hand. But you will have to wait until the girls make their debut. Good luck.

Zoe

[amortize]

According to this page from the RHS that I just found, courgette plants tend to produce male flowers when day length is short, and switch to producing females as days lengthen. You can eat the male flowers, can't you, I think?

[JR]

My partners family are Italian and eat both male and female. Battered they are quite nice. Jamie Oliver has a recipe in his at home book first stuffing with cheese.

[Turf cutter man]

Cougettes definetley do better in the ground. That said before I grew my own my mum grew some in Grow bags and had kilos and kilos. They love water and you should be watering them every day if in pots.. The female flowers should come. You can feed them with tomato feed.

Sarah Raven reckons to sow another lot in june to plant out when the first lot are giviing up. So it is not to late to plant some more.[/b]

[JR]

Thought I should post a picture of one of the monsters I found in my plants yesterday. Good old horses doings!