Yellow courgette

Taye

I bought a yellow courgette plant from the garden center a while back but im having problems with it.

It started fruiting almost as soon as i got home however the fruit didn't really amount to much shriveling up and dying soon after. I put it down to lack of pollenation and started to try and rather unsucessfully hand pollenate it.

this has been going on for a few weeks now and i have managed "i think" to pollenate a few flowers however i now that my "from seed" green courgette's have started to flower i've noticed the fruit on the two plants seem quite quite different.

the green fruit starts off as little tiny tiny cucumber/courgette looking things, while the yellow courgettes start off as round balls which get bigger and remain balls.

Abit of a google has told me that you can actually get round courgettes and having gone back to the garden centre the man there said that he thinks the labels got confused as his other "yellow courgette plants" seem to also have round fruit.

Ok not a problem ... round long makes no difference to me.

now then ... ok green courgettes im planning on picking when they get to be sort of courgette sized like you would buy in the shop. what about round ones? how big to do let them go??

Mine so far only seem to get to be as big as chewing gum balls then the seem to shrivel, am i leaving them on the plant to long or is this due to the lack of pollenation?

any idea's?

point3

The round courgette may be this one:

http://www.thompson-morgan.com/seeds1/product/797/1.html

It's supposed to grow to the size of a tennis ball, but iirc we had very few fruits, it was slow growing and got devoured by slugs before they were fully ripe.

jjjme

It sounds like the courgette I brought seeds of from Thompson & Morgan a couple of months ago called 'Summer Ball' http://www.thompson-morgan.com/seeds1/product/908/2.html
I have a couple of little plants growing that are about to be planted out - I'll be interested to see how I get on with them now.

I've had little success with pumpkins in the past doing the same - shrivelling and dying; presumably due to lack of pollination. A few years ago I had to hand pollinate my parents cucumber plant in the greenhouse early each morning because it refused to set fruit. I wish you luck in getting a bit more out of it soon!

Taye

jjjme wrote: »

It sounds like the courgette I brought seeds of from Thompson & Morgan a couple of months ago called 'Summer Ball' http://www.thompson-morgan.com/seeds1/product/908/2.html
I have a couple of little plants growing that are about to be planted out - I'll be interested to see how I get on with them now.

I've had little success with pumpkins in the past doing the same - shrivelling and dying; presumably due to lack of pollination. A few years ago I had to hand pollinate my parents cucumber plant in the greenhouse early each morning because it refused to set fruit. I wish you luck in getting a bit more out of it soon!

OOh thats the one that looks just like mine. so what do we think then lack of pollenation??

Money_Grabber13579

If the fruit is forming at all, then this would be a sign that the flower had been pollinated. Did you give it enough fertilizer and water?

floral_2

I didn't see it before .

squack

i grew a few of these round yellow courgettes last year, very disappointing even in a polytunnel .. the fruits seemed to develop ok to start with then stop growing and rot off, yellow courgettes in general seem more prone to rotting, the skins on the green ones appear tougher and for flavour and yield you can't beat an F1 variety like "Defender" (for example)

Taye

Money_Grabber13579 wrote: »

If the fruit is forming at all, then this would be a sign that the flower had been pollinated. Did you give it enough fertilizer and water?

They get to about 10p peice size then they just rot off, tbh thats about the size they are when the flowevers start opening for pollenation. I went out to it this morning and managed to pollenate another flower.

Im just going to keep trying i guess the plant only cost me 25p if it doens't work out i'll just make a mental note not to buy the yellow one again next year.

rum1

I only have 1 yellow courgette plant and have only watered it with no feed, up till now i had about 10 courgettes already and plenty more ready to come. I hope this is just not beginers luck as this is the first time ive grown them--sorry cant help but my local nursery said dont over water and you should be fine

Zazen999

It's still a tad too early for decent courgettes yet. Give it another 3 weeks and you will be inudated with courgettes. At this stage, they are just getting going. Take off the first few that you get when they are about an inch or two long; I find this speeds up the following fruits, which you can then leave longer.

Lotus-eater

There are several types of round courgette. I have grown them before, but found them not as good for preparing to cook. Can't remember exactly why, but the OH asked me not to grow them again.

IIRC, when a courgette isn't pollinated properly, you do get a small fruit forming, then it goes yellow and falls off.