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Old 05-08-2004, 07:20 PM
Bob Hobden
 
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Default No fruit courgettes


"Edwin Spector" wrote ...
No help, but mine are also fruitless. They are growing outside, next to
successful raspberries and rhubarb. The flowers appear, but fall off. I

did spot
a couple of tiny courgettes (little-finger) but they fell off instead of
growing. I did have lots of pollen beetles in the plants. Dunno if they've
nicked all my pollen instead of passing it around. Same happened last

year - I
harvested ONE courgette from all my plants.

I strongly suspect that there's something funny in my soil. The tomato

plants
that grow so well on the sunny windowsill went into slow-motion when they

got
transplanted outside. Same for the courgettes - after two months outside,
they're hardly bigger than houseplants.

I'm in the south-west, where the climate is mild. The bigger plants
(raspberries) are acting as windbreaks for the smaller ones. Everything

looks
right (to me) but no courgettes.

Stumped

As I've said, what we do is dig a big bucket sized hole, fill it with well
rotted compost, mix a little soil in the top couple of inches and plant the
cucurbit in/on that. The soil taken out is used to make a water dam around
the hole so no water is wasted and it all goes into the compost, it also
gives the plant some wind protection when small.
They get about 0.75 gal of water per day unless it rains heavily and are
given a general purpose feed (seaweed extract) once a week.

Also, try hand pollinating to see if it is those pollen beetles.

The Toms; well ours outside on the allotment are now at a max of 4ft tall
max with some fruit just ripening. Do you water and feed them well?

Perhaps you need your soil tested.

--
Regards
Bob
in Runnymede, 17miles west of London, UK