Too late for courgettes?

Its too late to start from seed. I sowed mine in mid April and am just about to start harvesting this week.

You would do much better to buy a couple of plants from the Garden Centre, they are reasonably priced and its not too late to plant them out and they will get going very quickly now. A couple of plants will give lots and lots of fruit. :gnthb:

 

Garp: There are a couple of problems with courgettes, sometimes the young plants produce only male flowers, don't worry - just leave them and eventually they will start producing both.

Then normally you don't have to do anything else, insects will pollinate them for you. However this early in the season it pays to hand pollinate the first few (otherwise the baby courgetes go yellow and rot on the plant).

To hand pollinate courgettes you select an open male flower, cut or nip the male flower off with your fingers, pull off the petals and gently dab the pollen from the male anthers onto the female flowers (female flowers have a swelling behind the flower, which is the embryonic fruit).

I usually leave the male flower in the female, as insects will crawl all over them helping spread the pollen even more.

After a few days insects will be doing their job and you just leave them to get on with it, no need to remove any flowers.

:gnthb: