My courgettes are ruined. What did I do wrong?

[Mykittensmittens]

I’m probably being a little over-wounded and petulant about this but anyway….

I’m relatively new to all this. New big garden and beautiful greenhouse. Full of fanciful ideas about growing delicious veggies and fruit. I’ve put in hours of effort, hours of reading and research, and so far reaped the enormous harvest of 2 snack cucumbers. My tomatoes are Ridiculous frankly. My chillis (despite following Monty to the letter) are non-existent.

But it’s the courgettes that are threatening to send me over the edge today.

Basically I’ve cultivated a revolting mouldy, stinking pile of mess. the smell is horrendous. Every courgette is rotten to mush and covered in mould. We have had wet weather this last week but the week prior was glorious. They’re in a sunny sheltered spot on the side of the greenhouse. All that effort - for not even one edible courgette by the looks of things.

What did I do wrong?

What did I do wrong? You planted them in the UK, when all your best efforts can be wiped out by autumn deciding to start on July 24th.

You can salvage a lot of that. Cut them about 2mm into the dark green bit. If there's a bit of brown inside, cut another sliver off. I reckon you've got the equivalent of 4 courgettes there.

Once you have courgettes (or anything else) growing, you need to check them every day. Usually you can spot a courgette when just the tip is going, and get it into the kitchen and the tip cut off straight away.

It's early in the harvesting season. I'm only just starting to pick tomatoes, I've had 3 cucumbers. and chillis are still flowering, I don't expect the fruit to ripen until October.

You may have heard of the "Hungry Gap" when there are no crops to eat, and may have assumed it's winter, but it's actually in spring, when the weather is perking up, lots of vegetables are growing, but nothing is ready to harvest yet. Flower gardens are looking at their best in May, June, July, but the food harvest doesn't really start till the end of July and then goes on through August and September. So you've got a long time for things to go right.

Its definitely the weird weather we,ve been having. Absolutely nothing in my garden has succeeded this year that in other years have been bountiful. I've given up for this year.

I hear you OP! The slugs have been polishing things off at an alarming rate, when in previous years they've not really been a notable presence, they've even started scaling the dizzy heights of my raspberry canes and munching through the berries! All my dwarf beans were munched one night, my tomatoes are fruiting but I fear the blight might get them before ripening as it's been so wet and humid and horrible. I got four tiny strawberries from 15 plants! Only my potatoes seem unbothered as the slugs have only just started eating the plants and the tubers are already well formed (I dug some up yesterday). Keep going, there will be successes and triumphs, and they won't necessarily be the same things each year. If you salvage some non mouldy bits I'm sure the courgettes will be delicious!

Thank you.

I have mopped my moody tears and given my head a wobble.

Strawberries have done well, but only because I cheated. Squirrels were plundering my lovely strawberry pot so I put it on a bark bed and stuck a semi-redundant coldframe over the top and propped one lid up. We’ve had loads of those and the squirrels are too cautious to enter the frame so that’s a success.

I’ll be patient with the tomatoes (even though I can see the neighbours have red ones). And also be patient with the tomatillos. The chillis I’m hoping I can overwinter even if we fail this year.

I’ll follow the advice for the courgette. I haven’t salvaged anything from that cull as the stench was like a zombie post mortem. There are still some tiddlers on the plant so I’ve propped them up to ‘air’ and cut the manky leaves off.

It’s not easy, is it?

Put a cap full of tomorite on the soil around your plant, followed by a jug of water.

It fixed the blossom end rot on mine.

kittens my cherry tomatoes are just starting to ripen, especially those in the greenhouse but I would say 90% are still green. And the Shirley tomatoes which are in pots on the patio are green and hard and nowhere near ready. It's still very early for tomatoes in most parts of the UK.

Our courgettes have gone crazy but the lettuce all went to seed (too many planted at once) so loads was fed to the hens or put on the compost heap. Our roses were rubbish this year and no plums at all but some things are looking grand. I think you just have to rejoice in your successes like the strawberries. I know gardening is a skill (and there are loads of helpful and knowledgeable people on this board 😍) but I do think some things are down to luck too. And the weather. Don't be disheartened 🙂 🌱🤞.

My Gran was a super keen, super green fingered gardener and she was always saying 'to be a good gardener, you have to be an eternal optimist, even when all evidence points against it'.

This is a funny year weather wise: enjoy your successes, made the most of your losses and hope for better next time around

Last year I mainly only had green tomatoes by the end of summer. I took them all off the plants and put them on a windowsill. I was amazed that pretty much all of them ripened over time, I thought I was only going to have about 2 or 3!

Slugs have had a field day on my bean and courgette plants and even some of my flowers this year. Something else has been eating some of my seedlings. It can be so frustrating and I get so excited if I actually manage to grow something edible!

The rollercoaster weather definitely doesn’t help.

May I ask if these veggies have had sufficient room to grow / spaced appropriately?

If they don’t have the space to develop properly, they almost throw a strop and turn to mush.

Have you got trellis / something for your veggies to grow up on?

They can (along with a lot of other fruits:veggies) develop “powdery mildew”. Which is a pain to stop.

Don’t give up hope!

@Wineat5isfine yes I believe so. They’re in very big planters against the greenhouse wall (it’s a wooden one so the bottom 3rd is like a shed). However it’s sheltered. We are high up here (Derbyshire borders) - 800ft above sea level - so I put them in a sheltered spot as if it is windy it can be wicked. There is a little trellis at the back of the pot and I have ‘lifted’ the plant and tied it up as best I can to try and get air through. However the position as a result is maybe TOO sheltered with no breeze at all meaning they could have been getting too dry and I didn’t realise. One pot/plant is worse than the other.

By next year there will be a raised bed for them instead (autumn project!) so maybe that’ll work better for them in terms of spacing and air.

Or maybe I’ll just grow some beans instead

It’s not been the best year, no! Our apple has canker rot and is going to have to go. Our other apple didn’t pollinate as the sick apple didn’t blossom either. The strawberries were fine but have just about finished now.

DS has planted a cucamelon in the greenhouse and that’s gone nuts - we have a vine full of teeny tiny things that look like baby cucumbers but very slow to grow any more in the last 10 days so that’s a watch and wait job.

Yes a greenhouse is great but can also get much TOO hot in the summer. (this summer has been weird with it too hot and then too cold). Also as others have said it is early to expect a huge harvest. I have had self seeded courgettes in the garden[ I noticed the plant in early July, I fed and watered a lot and they have fruited into October! happy as Larry just climbing out of the pot and on the ground! Not inside!

A few of those courgettes look not properly pollinated to me, are they the first ones for the plants? Courgettes keep producing for some time so if I were you I would hand fertilise the next female flowers (with the fruit behind) with the male flowers (no fruit). Good luck, I love growing squash and courgettes but have had plenty of failures over time.