Janet wrote:
success, get Green Bush. The others all sound so much more exciting, but I
have found that they are very hit and miss, but the green bush ones will just
keep going until first frost.
I agree. Yellow ones are particularly mean with their fruit.

Not just the yellow ones - the yellow bush ones were so-so. But the bush
variety vs the sprawling variety makes a huge difference in reliability,
IME. I think last year we actually had 3 varieties make it to reliable
cropping - green bush, nero di milano and, umm, something else. Black
beauty perhaps? But the year before the /only/ ones that cropped were
the green and yellow bush. The year before that the snails got all the
yellow bush ones before they got to fruiting, I think.

Have you done that thing with your boys, let them scratch their name
with a nail on a small one, then watch it grow into a huge personalised
marrow?

I haven't, I'll add it to the list. I'm not sure I have enough courgette
plants to add one to their patch, but I have a lot of patty pan plants
going spare (unless I sell them off at the school tabletop sale on Sunday!)
so it should probably work the same with them.

The main veggie beds show no sign of slugs or snails as there is a huge
expanse of bare soil around them so nowhere to hide.
It would be a brave slug or snail that attempted the journey to my lettuces
(famous last words)
*says nothing*
They are just forming up into legions before they set out on the route
march. Like antelopes travelling in huge herds across the plains, so that
most of them escape the lion attacks.

I now have mental images of snails strapping on antelope costumes and lining
up ready for the long haul ...


--