Courgettes starting to flower

If my courgette plants survive past May this year then I plan to train the branches up an angled trellis, so the leaves are on top basking in the sun (yeah right!) and the fruit hang down underneath for easy picking. I think I've read that your cucumbers/courgettes will grow straighter like this as they're not avoiding the vegetation as much.

I don't have this much room, but something similar to this:
http://st.houzz.com/fimages/763964_0506-w422-h634-b0-p0--traditional-landscape.jpg

 

Looks good, but courgettes are mostly bush-type plants, aren't they? Or are some of them trailers?

 

Oh no, i've had them charge off sideways across the Garden.

 

I've never come across Courgettes that ramble. They do assume that "style" of growing, but the leaf stalks are so close together that they, in effect, only "head off" on a ramble. Thus I don't think you will be able to train them at all.

Marrows, Squash and the like have longer stems between leaves, and definitely ramble (although there may be varieties of those that are more compact)

All these things tend to produce Male Flowers for some time before any female flowers, so no hand pollination needed until you see a female flower (male flowers have longer thing stalks, female flowers have a shorter stubby stalk - which is actually the immature fruit, so tends to have the form & shape of the fruit [depending on what type / variety it is, the Melon stalks are female flowers are ball shaped, Cucumbers, Courgettes etc are elongated by comparison)

You sure you need to?

There's two types, and cross-over between the types too, it couldn't me more complicated I'm afraid :(

There are Indoor/Greenhouse varieties (remove the Male flowers) and Outdoor/"Ridge" varieties (do not remove the male flowers)

Trouble is, there is some [although not a lot of] cross over where outdoor need flowers removing, and indoor need them leaving on.

Apart from old fashioned and Heritage Greenhouse varieties, most greenhouse varieties nowadays are F1 plants that ONLY produce Female flowers (you might get the occasional male flower when the plant is young, or stressed, but its so rare as to be something you can pretty much ignore)

So ... if you have loads of male flowers on your Cucumbers you either have a heritage / old fashioned NON-F1 female-flower-only greenhouse variety, OR you have a variety that you should leave the flowers on (most probably an outdoor/Ridge variety).

Sorry, made that into a completely mouthful to describe ...

Do you know the variety? do you still have the seed packet / instructions? that would hopefully have clear advice.

Top-and-bottom of it is that I think it is worth choosing & growing an F1-Female-flower-only variety for the Greenhouse.

 

A quick Google image search later and I see that I was obviously thinking of cucumber plants. I was thinking the growth would sort of spread over the top of the trellis, but it looks like the courgettes all come from the centre of the bush?

Good job someone pointed this out before I went and got a piece of trellis!

 

That's it