terryc writes:
Our last attempt produced nice big plants, lots of flowers and no fruit
despite hand pollination, so might have been wrong variety.

Hence my question.

Zucchinis come in blackjack (dark green), greyzinni (pale grey/green),
and golden. Not speaking specifically for Sydney, but the golden ones
are a waste of time trying to grow. I think the blackjacks should
suit everywhere. The greys are likely to be almost as disappointing
as the golden. You just can't go wrong planting the blackjacks, and
they are the best tasting, to boot. :-)

I guess you mean that you got lots of male flowers, and few female
flowers?

As for pollination--YOU DON'T NEED POLLINATION. NONE! NADA! NIL!
That's the beauty of growing zucchinis.

You can pick each fruit the day after its flower opens. The flower
will still be on the end of it, break it off. The fruit are at
their mouth-watering tastiest when this small size, and it is
immaterial whether or not the flower has been visited by a bee.
Only if you want the fruit to grow to a large size do the flowers
need to be pollinated, and with large zucchinis being as tasteless
as the old marrows of yore, I can't see why anyone would want this
(unless you are growing them to feed to guinea pigs).

Bear in mind that by picking all the fruit when it's still small
you are encouraging the plant to keep on producing more. Lots more.

Len gave you good advice. Hill the areas where you plant them so
they drain well. Never water the leaves, they succumb to mildew
soon enough as it is, without encouraging it! Don't plant them
where they'll miss out on morning sun; I think they need their
morning sun.

Plant them as seeds, you'll have no success transplanting.

BTW, you do know that you can eat the flowers, too.
--
John Savage (my news address is not valid for email)