[3759allen]

i seem to have only female flowers (ones with actual marrow fruits at the base) showing at the moment on all my marrow plants. at present the male flowers have only just come into bud stage (prob take a good week before becoming an open flower).

is it going to be best to snip off the first female flowers/ marrow fruits to allow the plant to put more energy into producing more flowers/ crop when there are both female and male flowers open at the same time? or will the female flowers still be open and able to become pollinated by time the male flowers open?

i will hand pollinate as soon the first male flower is open to try and make sure they do get pollinated.

i grew them last year in a poly tunnel and the first few marrows rotted off at a young stage (i'm guessing due to not being pollinated). i didn't hand pollinate to start with last year until i realised there may have been a pollination problem. so this year will be hand pollinating from the start and hopefully being outside will get more insect pollination.

any views helpful. thanks.

[JayG]

There ought to be safety in numbers having several similar plants but yours seem to all have the same annoying habit, although it's not at all unusual when they first start flowering.

Male flowers can develop surprisingly quickly in warm weather, although the females tend to die off in a maximum of a couple of days whether pollinated or not. I don't usually remove them because I'm probably hoping for divine intervention. 

My Di Nizza courgettes needed no help with pollination last year, even though on occasions I wished they'd slow up a little, but the Defenders have always needed some manual intervention - this may be because they are in a part of the garden not favoured by bees for some reason because most people don't seem to have problems when growing them outdoors.

[3759allen]

thanks for the reply.

it looks like one plant is a bit further forward than the rest so hopefully the male flowers from this plant will be open by time the female flowers are open on the rest of them.

i may try half manual pollination and have natural, to see whats best. the last half of the season last year i would have had to cut my way through the jungle to even see the flowers to hand pollinate so just gave up and let them do their thing, but the crop did peter off at that time. hopefully being outside this year will increase the amount of bee's.

any more views or advice very much welcome. thanks