Pumpkin

Who is the pumpkin / courgette specialist out there? Help is needed here! Daitheplant?


What a shame, Dave, I also think it is Tesco for you this year.

We've had some pumpkins and courgettes fall off that looked like yours. Hubby thinks it's because they were not pollinated. However, with the way the one sort of bees were crowding into the flowers, I can't believe that. Must be some other reason.

It is interesting to see how the pumpkin is growing down to the door, be knocking to come in soon!

What is growing at the side of the stairs? Courgettes to the left? and something similiar to the right?

You can be pround of your greenhouse though, those tomatoes look scrummy! My few outside ones were crummy only fit for the compost heap. The beans are coming along nicely too.

 

Hi Kedi-Gato
The plant on the right you can see is a Cucumber "Perfection" the trouble is if they get pollinated they taste bitter and you should see my boy's face when we do the taste test together it is great fun because you put the cucumber in your mouth and it seems ok for a while then if it has been pollinated it tastes very bitter at this point we both look at each other and dash to the nearest sink. If you look carefully you can see one growing near the top of the picture you can also see a couple of tomatoes in the same area.

Happy Gardening
Beautiful weather here this weekend

Dave

 

Hi Kedi, courgettes, marrows and pumpkins all need to be pollinated to set fruit. The easiest way to do this is to take off a male flower, remove the petals and pollinate the female flowers. With cucumbers, as Davidguy says, they should not be pollinated and I always advise people to use an female variety. David.

 

Hi Dave and David! I didn't know that about cucumbers!

We tried growing them years ago in our newly-built Wintergarten and they did get going quite well. THEN the white flies appeared in the millions, the yellow stickers just couldn't cope with them. In the end we had to pull everything out and throw away and Hubby had to smoke the Wintergarten out - did that ever stink! That put us off growing cucumbers for good.

Hubby keeps an eye on our courgettes and pumpkins and pollinates the female flowers like this.

David, you'll know the answer as to whether the pumpkins (or courgettes) can be eaten still if the leaves get mildew.

 

Kedi, as long as you are not eating the leaves you will be fine, seriously though, if you do get mildew on the fruit then it should just wash off, it shouldn`t affect the viability of the pumpkin, also, if you want to grow cucmbers without the bother of whitefly then get what`s called a ridge cucumber this is an outdoor cucumber. They don`t look as pretty as a greenhouse cuc but they taste the same. David.

 

Thanks David. I've docketed the info about mildew but I think I'll still stick to store-bought cucumbers.

 

Hi,

I have managed 3 pumpkins this year (my first year of growing) they were doing fine until the stem of the plant completely died on all three plants. Now all that is happening is that the pumpkin is going orange but not growing any bigger, a bit disappointing but can't complain too much as it is only the first try!