Allotment Gardening Advice Help Chat
Growing => Grow Your Own => Topic started by: Springlands on July 24, 2012, 18:31
-
has completely abandoned me. :( The last of my courgette plants has given up and died. Do not blame them - they have had to deal with cold, damp and rainy conditions since they were planted out. Not to mention the slugs. >:( So hoiking the last plants out tomorrow and using the space for more of my leeks.
-
It's pretty much the same here too :( :(
I think she must have emigrated.
-
I have two plants, out of three remaining, which are flowering. I hope some sunshine in addition to the increased temperatures will encourage the courgette fairy to visit. :)
-
I touch wood as I type as the 2 in the back garden have small fruit on and the 5 at the allotment are apparently rallying.
Here's hoping. I actually had to buy courgettes last week. I can't tell you how much that hurt >:(
-
I actually had to buy courgettes last week. I can't tell you how much that hurt >:(
Or more to the point, how tasteless they are. :(
-
I actually had to buy courgettes last week. I can't tell you how much that hurt >:(
Or more to the point, how tasteless they are. :(
Exactly - it was growing my own courgettes got me eating them - before that I thought that they were horrible.
At least I am getting some cukes - although one of the plants looks as if it might join the courgettes. ::) ::)
-
I actually had to buy courgettes last week. I can't tell you how much that hurt >:(
Or more to the point, how tasteless they are. :(
Oh yus, that too.
Fingers and eyes crossed that the newly arrived sunshine will hurry them along now.
-
I have 3 surviving on the plot and picking up now. Saw a few flowers today.
The other 3 which were planted out a bit earlier on a wing and a prayer as the greenhouse was full to busting are about dead.
I may leave a saucer of milk out and see if that entices the fairy to visit :) I refuse to buy them :mad: Well I'm not giving in just yet ;)
-
Think the fairy must be residing in Maidstone, though a few initial problems getting them established already giving them away!
-
Think the fairy must be residing in Maidstone, though a few initial problems getting them established already giving them away!
I will be down tomorrow with my shopping bags. :lol: :lol:
-
I'm down to just 2 plants (from 6) Male flowers only so far and only on 1 of them.
Im beginning to think the courgette fairy is like Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny and the tooth fairy. :lol:
Two years running now I've not had enough to do anything with.
-
Had the same problem, 4 healthy plants went in the ground - now there is nothing :(
Had to buy courgettes, not good :(
-
I think the fairy must be living on my plot. 9 plants, all of which have survived the weather and are now all producing fruit. Made a lovely courgette and ricotta bake last night.
-
I have one plant producing, out of three, it's the type that sets fruit without needing pollinating :)
The other two are different varieties that need pollination - and they're still thinking about it ::)
-
all 5 alive, 3 flowering and one teenie fruit forming
-
Mine overcame all odds; rain, cold, slugs, being scratched up by chickens and replanted with some root loss (silly me left the gate open) and have grown 6" in a few days and are putting out all male flowers.
Which is a start.
-
...is also alive and well in Sunny St Leonards (as well as YorkieGal's plot!) - I am giving them away! Green, yellow, round or long - you name it! I don't know why they are doing well on my plots(?)
Weird 'cos the lady I gave my courgettes to today said all hers had been eaten by slugs. I am guessing that the delay in my planting them out meant that I missed the hungry slugs.
-
My courgettes are losing their original leaves (yellowing/dry/crumbly - but there is still new leaves and fruits being produced luckily.
I have had about 15 large courgettes(marrows ;) )
Our weather went from fron soaking wet to now hot dry and extremely sunny - I think it dried the leaves out!
-
...has waved her wand in my general direction - all 4 of mine are going well. The one in the disastrous potato bed is going particularly bonkers. Good job we really reeeeeeeeeeeeeeally like them!
-
I've got a Parthenon going in my tunnel, and that's been cropping for weeks now. I have to say it's not the best courgettes I've ever grown though. The Defenders and One Balls outside are all looking pretty perky now the sun's shining. The One Balls have put off a ridiculous amount of fruit but so far none have grown to much size before rotting, which I guess is down to lack of pollination. I did manage to nurture one Defender courgette to stuffing size, which is my very favourite way of using courgettes, and that was worth the wait. Other than that, I've basically been making do with the Parthenon courgettes until the outside jobbies get into their stride.
Vast improvement on last year, which was the first year ever I had a total failure of all my courgettes. But what I really want is a ridiculous glut, so I can start experimenting with drying them in my shiny new dehydrator :)
-
I make a lovely quiche qith courgettes by grating them finely onto a clean tea-towel, then squeezing the grated flesh to get rid of the excess water. Then I add anything nice, cheese, onions, spring onions, spinach, beans, peas anything. Mix with a couple of eggs and fill a pastry base - yum :)
-
I've got a Parthenon going in my tunnel, and that's been cropping for weeks now. I have to say it's not the best courgettes I've ever grown though. The Defenders and One Balls outside are all looking pretty perky now the sun's shining. The One Balls have put off a ridiculous amount of fruit but so far none have grown to much size before rotting, which I guess is down to lack of pollination. I did manage to nurture one Defender courgette to stuffing size, which is my very favourite way of using courgettes, and that was worth the wait. Other than that, I've basically been making do with the Parthenon courgettes until the outside jobbies get into their stride.
Vast improvement on last year, which was the first year ever I had a total failure of all my courgettes. But what I really want is a ridiculous glut, so I can start experimenting with drying them in my shiny new dehydrator :)
What don't you like about Parthenon? For the first time ever I'm getting loads of courgettes, even with this "summer"! For the past 3-4 years I've had huge problems with rotting fruit, presumably due to bad polination. Had tried AGB, defender and some round ones. All disasters. It's Parthenon all the way for me now. And they taste good. And I didn't realise they still flower really well so loads of flowers to eat.
Can you tell I'm a convert?!
-
. But what I really want is a ridiculous glut, so I can start experimenting with drying them in my shiny new dehydrator :)
me too
i've got 4 looking good now starting to flower and a friend has given me 6 more fine a space somewhere
-
What don't you like about Parthenon? For the first time ever I'm getting loads of courgettes, even with this "summer"! For the past 3-4 years I've had huge problems with rotting fruit, presumably due to bad polination. Had tried AGB, defender and some round ones. All disasters. It's Parthenon all the way for me now. And they taste good. And I didn't realise they still flower really well so loads of flowers to eat.
Can you tell I'm a convert?!
It's not the taste, and they're the earliest courgettes I think I've ever had, and prolific too. They completely get rid of the normal courgette thing of going through this frustrating phase of getting loads of fruit that get just big enough to get you excited then promptly rot. My only complaint is they tend to be kind of skinny, often a bit irregular in shape (skinny at one end), and they clearly don't want to grow big enough to be stuffers. They're the perfect courgette if you want to eat loads of small courgettes. But as I said, my fav thing to do with courgettes is let them grow into monsters and stuff them.
I do like eating small courgettes too. But if I could only grow one type of courgette, it would have to be a type like Defender that storms away into stuffing monsters :)
-
sounds like you want small marrows not courgette, I always thought that courgettes ment small ie french courg means marrow ette means small.
-
The courgette fairy has obviously been occupied elsewhere - think she might be visiting soon but will almost certainly expect me to do my daily rounds with my trusty little paintbrush to avoid losing more than I get - other folk seem to get their "glut" without having to help out with pollination but the bees always seem to be too busy with other flowers in this part of Sheffield! :unsure:
-
sounds like you want small marrows not courgette, I always thought that courgettes ment small ie french courg means marrow ette means small.
Well, as I said, I like small courgettes too, but I can't see the point in growing both marrows and courgettes when I can get both from the same plant. But marrows aside, the Parthenon fruit have been generally smaller than a supermarket sized courgette and have tended to be irregular in shape.
-
Mine have finally started to do well! I've not grown them before so have nothing to compare with (and my seeds were cheap ones from £land). I have 4 plants in the veg patch, before this weekend I only had a couple of very small ones. But this weekend just gone I picked one that was verging on a marrow, a medium and a small! When looking at the veg patch yesterday I noticed another 4 needing picking (but I forgot :nowink:). Perhaps not a good yield from 4 plants, but good enough for me. Previous to this weekend I noticed a lot had rotted away! Being the first year of growning my expectations are low...
Hannah :)
-
My courgettes (3x Black Beauty & 1x Rugosa Friulina) are just starting and the marrows (4x Tiger Cross) has been producing for a month.
-
My courgettes (3x Black Beauty & 1x Rugosa Friulina) are just starting and the marrows (4x Tiger Cross) has been producing for a month.
my marrows are refusing to germinate. am very jealous!
shokkyy, I have lebanese courgettes, and though they are vicious b****rs, they definitely grow big enough to stuff!
-
She has waved her wand here
Only four to date, but given that a month ago I thought all i would get was slug food I am happy :D
Plus a patty pan, I was thinking they were yellow courgette seeds! LOL
Hoping for a bit of a glut as love chutneys!
-
Think the fairy must be residing in Maidstone, though a few initial problems getting them established already giving them away!
I'm coming over to Maidstone soon Galen, and will whistle a happy tune on your behalf...
We had five this evening, and they'll pay for the eggs we get from some friends nearby...
...when they really start that is...!
-
Courgettes are one of the few things I have done well with so far. Just been out and picked a carrier bag full. Mind you I have ended up with 20 plants. :ohmy: Made some soup to freeze today and must make some chutney when it cools down a bit. Can't bear standing over the hob in these temps.
-
.............. has arrived at last, and delivered a yellow courgette - yipee!
-
My 4 black beauty plants outside are slowly withering away, although I am getting some male flowers; the same variety in the lean-to is growing well, but so far no flowers at all ???
The 2 Atena yellow plants are even more vigorous in the lean-to, and producing a lot of flowers, male and female.... just that so far the female flower-lets are falling off before they open!
TBH, similar story to last year. I think I just don't have the right set up for courgettes here! (The lean-to is on the west side of the house and partly shaded by a fence, so only gets about 2h full sun each day) Might try again next year with some more standard varieties, and then give up and give the lean-to over to cucumbers and chillis, which seem to work very well)
-
can the insects get into the lean-to to pollinate the flowers :unsure:
-
I've got different types a few courgette plants all mixed together with the squash plants. They've all only just started growing courgettes / squashes (until which i have no idea what is what...) The yellow round ones seem to be the most profilic at the moment. A few marrow type ones started to grow quickly last week but then just withered away... :tongue2:
-
can the insects get into the lean-to to pollinate the flowers :unsure:
Yes.... it's never been quite the same since the storms last autumn, and the frames are rather wonky, so there are plenty of gaps. Also leave the door ajar most days.
But the female flowers aren't even opening, exactly as last year.
-
Just to reiterate. I had this same problem for 3-4 years. Despite cruddy summer, Parthenon are romping away - flowers are even growing and opening (not that you need them for fruit, but good to eat!).
-
"But the female flowers aren't even opening, exactly as last year"
Yes, this is a new one for us this year, Lazza - very odd!
But there again, there are several other things going awry also, like toms winging off in all directions, and onions sulking...
-
I had to have a quite word with my courgette plants today. They seem to be working overtime. I have two yellow and one green and they are producing four courgettes per day. And today I found another plant, which I had forgotten about and it had four round fruits ready to harvest. I can't cope!
-
It really does seem to be a contrasting story for peeps - some successes and some failures. Any two of my courgette plants have got a short reprieve - the recent
hot warmish weather has encouraged them to put out new leaves and even some flower buds so they are getting another chance to see what happens. The other two have been hoiked out never to be seen again. :) Hard to believe that I originally sowed about 10 plants.
-
First courgette today from my white courgette plant, plus flowers and baby fruits on this and the yellow courgette plants
(http://i104.photobucket.com/albums/m198/suec_02/Emoticons/happy093.gif)
Gem squash that I got via a seed swap romping away and covered in little round fruits as well, so thank you Gavin for those ;) :D
-
I just have three plants that were gifted by one of the other plotholders, two yellow ones and a green one. I'd avoided growing any at all because of memories of stuffed marrow when I was a child (- I'd rather have eaten dirt!) but TOH said to give them a go. So, last year we grew a green one, called black Beauty or something similar, and ended up giving most of them away and chutneying the rest. This year I wasn't going to bother, but as we had some space and three free plants I thought we'd give it another go. Surprised to find that they have grown well, producing their first small fruits this week, and that the yellow ones have not only grow better than the green, but they taste much better too! I tried them just simply fried with some nice salty bacon, then piled on toast - lovely!
-
Mine are going great guns - have 7 plants each producing one or two courgettes maybe twice a week.
Already im scouring the net for new recipes and i know loads will end up in the bin!!!
-
Don't forget the recipes section of the site :D
There's also a recipe book called something like 100 things to do with courgettes, I think!
-
And this link was posted by a forum member not so long ago and is their favourite recipes -I am hoping to try lots of them very soon :D
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/607165/Courgette%20Recipe%20Book.pdf