Could someone help me with my courgette plant

[Deux]

Have never grown courgettes before, but so far so good and so satisfying. The plant has about 12 courgettes on it in various stages of growth. I have some questions.

There are lots of leaves on the plant, should I be trimming some of them off?

Some of the courgettes are yellowing at the ends, what does this indicate and should I be picking these?

When do I pick the courgettes? The largest ones currently are about 5 inches long.

Thanks.

Just reread my message and it reads like an exam question.

I'm definitely growing courgettes again as well, I've just planted it and watered it and bingo.

Have you eaten any of the flowers? I noticed our local PYO is selling courgette flowers.

Don't trim the leaves.

Pick them when the size that you want to eat them. The smaller they are, the more tender and tastier they are. If the weather is dry the flower will die, dry out and drop off the end, if the weather is wet it may go a bit manky and in turn so may the end of the courgette so keep an eye on that. If find it easy to just cut the courgettes off the plant with a knife rather than pick them.

I've never eaten the flowers. Pull off any male flowers to stop the plant wasting energy on them (these are the ones on a stalk only with no sign of courgette).

Don't go on holiday for a week and come home to marrows like I did one year.

HTH

If you pull off the male flowers you do need to make sure you use them to pollinate the female flowers before you chuck them though. Otherwise the courgettes won't develop properly. Other than that, what betterbit said. You can put a tile or something under the fruit so it doesn't come into contact with the soil - this helps to prevent rot.
Squashes are about the only things I can reliably grow. You should try butternuts. They clamber like vines. Mine scrambled 6ft up a tree and went next door. It was like having triffids .

Yeah I grew butternuts one year... they were pretty much all I did grow as they romped their way through my tiny garden. Courgettes are much easier to contain!

Yeah true but I'm totally non-green-fingered and the butternuts made me feel like I'd actually GROWN something, for once! They were the first things I've actively had to try to stop growing...

The yellowing at the ends is probably where they haven't been fertilised properly and I'd be tempted to take those off. You don't need to as if the plant will shed them itself if they aren't fertile.

Generally the more you pick the more you get. If they start getting too marrow like it slows the plant down.

Many thanks. This is great information. It's raining here for the first time in ages and am really happy!

Will harvest some of my courgettes later today. Butternuts sound great and will definitely do some next year. I've vowed not to do tomatoes again as they've gone crazy this year and are just too high maintenance.

Just leave them. What tends to happen is that they produce all male flowers first (the ones on a long stem with no little courgette thingy behind it), or sometimes all female. After a bit they sort themselves out and produce male and female flowers and the insects should pollinate them.

What you can do is keep a male flower in the fridge and stuff it in to a female flower if it appears when no other male flowers are around, but you don't need to do this, they will sort themselves out (then when you have a courgette glut you might regret it). Beenbeta, you should just get a slightly later crop, hang in there !

My courgette plants are now producing fairly regularly so I am harvesting them, slicing them and either roasting or frying them then feezing them. I am hoping that I will eventually have all the component parts of ratatouille. It's a bit piecemeal at the moment.

I have found that 3 plants does my family.

I never fertilise them!

Cut off every courgette you can find before you go on hols - even the tiny ones. That will prompt the plant to keep producing.

If you come back to marrows, cut them all off then feed and water the plant and it should start again.

Best recipe I have found is to slice them lengthways very thinly with a veg peeler then fry till golden then toss in a very mustardy-lemony vinaigrette.

Marrows can be cut into chunks and poached as if they were pears, apparently.

Delish!

Hi, all. Interesting discussion. Think most of original qu covered off but just in case:
=> Leave leaves, unless they get mildewy (as all curcurbits do, eventually)
=> Yellowing at flower end (if going squidgy) probably means they're beginning to rot; harvest & eat the bit that isn't mankey but unwise to leave on plant, as rot could spread
=> YOu can eat courgettes when small or large. Small = tender Even the big overgrown 'marrows'are good - maybe stuffed?

Fav recipe is to chop courgettes into 1/4" cubes, along with some fresh carrots, garlic, onions & bulb fennel (all dead easy to grow yourself, by the by) & saute gently in olive oil (be generous with oil) until veg are beginning to soften. Then add some herbs & tender young broad beans & cook until all softened & flavours melted into each other - brill, piled on crispy bread.

On subject of Broad Beans - if you love 'em but hate fiddling with the tough shells, try Stereo, which is a short plant (2ft high-ish) and a smaller bean, so sweet & tender that you can eat it straight out of the pod!!

To all Butternut fans, have you tried some of the other Winter Squash? Creown Prince is an absolute corker!! Fruits are biggish, pumpkin-like with a light grey blue skin, flesh dense with a rich nutty, sweet flavour, not unlike chestnuts. Roasts to perfection & is now a stable for Christmas lunch. Likewise Buttercup, which has a dark bottle green skin & orange flesh. With both of these, you may not get a huge number of fruits but they are big & store very well indeed - we have just eaten the last of 2009 crop. Leave fruits on vine as long as poss but make sure you harvest before the first Autumn frosts. Oh & let the fruit ripen in storage for at least a week or so, before eating, as this will max on starch to sugar conversion & greatly enhance the flavour.

Hi RuralLass
Do you know if broadbean Stereo can be over-wintered please?

Hi, SuzieHomemaker. By 'overwintering', I am guessing you are asking about Autumn Planting. And you've got me wondering.... I have seed from two different suppliers & they each recommend different sowing spreads - one Mar-Apr & one Oct-May!! Myself, I have always sown them inside (unheated greenhouse or cold frame)in very early Spring (late Feb to Mar), grown them on a bit and then planted out when the worst of frosts are over. They are pretty hardy but light fleece when they're small doesn't hurt any, just in case. Being relatively small plants, they grow on fast from Spring plantings & soon start laying on pods. Re. Autmn plantings, I tend to avoid, due to unpredicable Winters - have found that snow, waterlogging and heavy frosts have made Autumn plantings unreliable & plants often weak & prone to fungal infections. Just my own experience, hasten to add - some folks swear by Autumn planting but I suspect this may be more appealing for tougher, larger varieties. Hope this helps.

Yes broad beans are hardy. Traditionalists germinate in Autumn, plant out in a reasonably protected spot (ie not an exposed windy hill) and get really early beans.

Stereo is a dwarf one I think? So should last well over winter.

I have 3 courgette plants and 1 cucumber plant. Two of the courgettes were planted first and I had several good courgettes for about 4 weeks, and then they stopped producing them (one has just started again, but fewer than before). The cucumber plant seems to be going the same way, except I can actually see that all the baby cucumbers have died (after producing 3 corkers), whereas the courgettes just didn't seem to be producing any. The 3rd courgette plant has just started producing for the first time - but is it too going to have a few really good ones then conk out?

Anyone know what is going on??

I have all flowers but only one fruit which ds picked in excitement when it was an inch long.

You can lightly tempura the flowers and eat. DH pays £1.50 each for wee courgettes with the flower attached!

I have too many. Courgette cakes I think

There is recipe for courgette and chocolate cake n last month's Good Food, so you could look for it on the BBC Good Food website

am reading with great interest as we live in south africa and are in winter at the moment (not that it's particularly cold!).

we have managed spinach, rocket and chinese cabbage all the way through winter and i am really looking forward to planting our tomatoes again for the summer along with courgettes and cucumbers!

Just made courgette and chocolate cake from a recipe I found on mumsnet a while ago here - but please can I suggest that you omit the cinnamon - my children are refusing to eat it because of that.