[Smudgeboy]

Hello all,

Long time no post, that's what redundancy, travelling and job-hunting will do to a fella.

Can anyone take a look at the attached pic and tell me what happened to this courgette.

The last couple of years I've grown three or four plants from seed with no problem at all, planted them out around this time of year and watched them go absolutely nuts - more courgettes than I could give away, let alone eat.

The ONLY difference this year (that I can think of) is that I planted them out in a newly built raised bed, rather than an existing, established garden bed. The raised bed gets more sun than the garden one (which is about 50:50 sun and shade this time of year) and the raised bed soil mix was about 60:40 compost to top soil.

I planted two and they've both done this - fortunately I have another two in pots which are still in rude health, but I'd like to now what caused these two to suffer, so I don't repeat the mistake.

Cheers

Smudge

[mole trapper]

yuk? sorry!  courgettes usually will grow in any rich soil,  know several people that plant them direct into the compost heap,  appart from that dont know, maybe too draughty? or not wet enough?

[Yorkie]

Could well be frost damage - even in the SE, frost can occur for another month yet, and you may just have been lucky in previous years

[DavidT]

How long did you harden them off for Smudge?

[mumofstig]

Yup we're still having frosts or very cold nights anyway.
Mine are still indoors

[Stripey_cat]

Too cold, or too windy?  Especially if you've been having the kind of weather we had earlier this week (5 degrees, driving rain, and enough wind to make walking difficult).  The extra drainage from the raised bed ought to be good for them, though, once it starts to warm up more.  Can you put cloches over the plants and see if they recover?  Even lemonade bottles should be worth a try.

[Smudgeboy]

Hardened them off for about three days, don't recall having any frosts recently, but it has been alternating between sunny/hot and rainy/cold every other day or so, so perhaps I just didn't give them enough hardening time.

I'll try the cloches to see if they recover, and keep the other two back for a week or two, before planting them out cloches and all.

Thanks all.

[Oliver]

Hardened them off for about three days, don't recall having any frosts recently, but it has been alternating between sunny/hot and rainy/cold every other day or so, so perhaps I just didn't give them enough hardening time.

I'll try the cloches to see if they recover, and keep the other two back for a week or two, before planting them out cloches and all.

Thanks all.

Looks like frost to me. It seems very early to be planting them out. Also 3 days hardening off? - I harden mine off for 2 weeks and plant out in early June. They go mad., but do need lots of water, so extra drainage in raised bed may not be a good idea? Do you plant then out this early every year?
(We had frost last night {Oxfordshrie}, and although the temperature has been lovely and warm in the sun during the day recently, it gets very chilly at night still).
As for trying to salvage the plant, abandon ship and sow some more seed - it will germinate and either catch up, or have fruit a bit later, so you won't have masses all at once! I have not even sowed my courgettes yet.
Oliver

[andreadon]

i agree - it's frost.

i never put mine out before the end of may and they're fine then, because they're big enough to cope.

i don't think you should try to revive that one - start again on a windowsill.
it won't take too long to catch up.  plus, it might lengthen the growing season