Remove male courgette flowers?

[mazmezroz]

I can see some flowers beginning to form on my courgettes, but they are male with long stems and no fruit behind them. Should these be removed to encourage female flowers to develop? Or are they needed for pollination?

[alan refail]

Mazmezroz

Brief answers:

No

Yes

In that order

Alan

[mazmezroz]

Thanks, Alan!

[fen not fen]

unless of course you're a bit of a gourmet and want to deep fry a courgette flower - apparently the male ones are best for this.

[dewwex]

Actually pollination is important in courgettes. i think the unpollinated courgettes don't develope very well. they don't fill out, and go tuff quicker, with kinda hollow cores. ie its also common for rot to set into the fruit at the flowering end. Maybe pollination is not the reason, but from experience it seems that way from my observations.

It is common practice though, to use a male flower to hand pollinate the female flowers. You pull off the flowers on one male flower and push the pollen-laden stamen? (thinks thats the name for male part) carefully into female flower. you probably will need to slighty tear open female flower to do so.

Also it is common for courgettes to produce male flowers earlier than female flowers.

So you have no need to worry!!