"bigboard" wrote in message
...
Jill wrote:


andrewpreece Wrote:
My first attempt at growing courgettes ( in the greenhouse ) is going
badly wrong. There is a little bit of white mould on the leaves,
though
nothing too serious, but every time a courgette gets going, the flower
end
goes yellow, then brown and soft, then rot proceeds back towards the
base,
the courgette eventually ending up as a soggy rotten blob covered in
grey
mould. Is there an effective cure?

thanks,

Andy.

I have a similar problem on outdoor courgettes yet the same plants are
also producing some excellent (and enormous) vegetables. Have you
found out what this is?



This happened to me as well. The rot seems to start from where the flower
attaches to the fruit, so I break the flowers off now as soon as they are
fertilised. I've had no problems since.


This happened to me last year, but eventually the plants started producing
viable courgettes, which swelled to usable size in about 2-3 days, which
meant that if I was away for a weekend I came back to marrows.

From the RHS website, courgette failure

Sometimes, male flowers are produced initially by plants when day-length is
short. Later, as day-length increases, plants will switch to produce mainly
female flowers. Male flowers are also induced by low temperatures, excess
shade and excessively close planting. Female flower production is promoted
by warm temperatures, and should occur later in the summer.

Female flowers can be identified by the swelling (immature fruit) at the
base of the flower.

Absence of fruits when male and female flowers are being produced suggests
pollination may be at fault. Try hand pollinating, where the male flower is
rubbed against the female.

Fruits swelling only at the top, often with shrivelling and rotting,
indicates incomplete pollination, usually due to cold temperatures. The
problem should decrease as the season progresses. Also too many fruits on
the plant can also cause rotting of small 'fruitlets'. This is the plant's
way of balancing its resources; the problem can be alleviated by harvesting
all usable fruits.