Kitchen Garden Forum

Felix - that will make us all feel better!

Hi Peter,
You say that your squashes have been out for a few weeks now and have not really taken off.
Well my thoughts are that they should not have been out for weeks and consider that this is your problem.
Although we have had some quite super days but along with these we have had some very cold nights for the season.
Squashes are known to sulk if subjected to long periods of cold.
JB.

Johnboy

My thoughts were the same as yours - an attempt to be too early doesn't usually pay off. We have had no particularly cold night temperatures here, but I didn't plant my courgettes and pumpkins till 5 June (quite early enough for most years in my experience. They were (as usual) looking slow, but after a day of rain yesterday are looking decidely perky and ready to take off.

alan refail wrote:but I didn't plant my courgettes and pumpkins till 5 June

I don't usually even sow mine until then: usually the first week in June. It's true that really early sowings never get off to a flying start. They're too easily put off by a chill, no matter how brief, and if they're held in small pots for too long, that holds them back, too. I'll probably plant them at the weekend. The weather's supposed to be really turning a corner next week, for the better.

My experience with squashes is that they will not begin to thrive until there is good warm soil temperature. Round here that is not until about mid-June. Although it is tempting to plant out pot-raised plants during a warm spell in say mid-May/early June it is is only the air which is warm at this time of year. Heat is conducted slowly into soil so soil temperatures always lag some way behind the increasing air temperatures.
At the end of Summer and early Autumn of course this position is reversed. The air temperatures begin falling but there still a very useful amount of warmth stored in the soil.

John

PS Memo to self - must invest in a soil thermometer!

On a closely related question - do you think it is now too late to sow squash (small fruiting varieties, Uchiki Kuri and Buttercup)? My plants were doing OK, but some have suffered slug damage to their main stem and, while I think they'll survive, I think they've been weakened. There's nothing to be lost, so I probably will sow a few more seed....

ken wrote:- do you think it is now too late to sow squash....

Ken of course it's not too late, most seed companies packets say May / June for sowing and if we have a decent Autumn.......

Well, fingers crossed... They're in their pots now.

Following a tip John gave in this other courgette thread,

Courgettes seem to give their best fruits when they are youngish plants so I make a later sowing around June time and eventually discard the earlier plants as the second sowing comes into cropping

I have just sown more courgettes to provide a second crop into the autumn. They will go in nice warm ground (hopefully) where the first and second early potatoes have come out.

I checked my squash plants today. Different varieties are performing differently. Crown Prince are starting to grow away now. One possibly two plants have set fruit. Butternut are just starting to get away and the acorn squash are stationary although look quite healthy.
I'm trying scallop squash this year too. They are a summer squash and have made good growth and are flowering, hopefully will have fruit soon.

So oppressive last night, weather-wise, that I had a nap after tea and went allotmenting around eight.
Picked strawberries and raspberries, more raspberries than is decent from a few canes heeled in at random a few years ago, didn't touch the ones under netting and got two nappy bags full. OK yes, but I always have some nappy bags with me as they are the cheapest dogg tidying bag you can get.
Watered all my barrells, the sweetcorn and strawberries.
Planted out five more sweetcorrn I had found lurking at home and my last lot of Squash.

The previously planted Squash are now showing variable growth.
The Butternut on the south edge are starting to voom and are nice & green, some of the others are not much different to when they were planted out.
The soil is still nice and moist, not set but still showing rotovation effects being a crumby surface of at least an inch deep. Under my planting mulch of carpet the soil is moist all the way up to the carpet.

I'm now hoping that with warmer nights the voom will VOOM.

Hello everyone
I've just joined to forum as I'm getting a bit depserate - everything is slow in my beds - infact everything is minuterised. My courgettes, peas, runner beans, sunflowers just aren't growing.

I have to garden in deep raised beds which are lined with plastic as my garden soil is very contaminated. I think it has just been too dry a spring. Since March, we haven't had much rain here in Cornwall and even though I'm watering every night, I just don't think it's the same as rain. I don't know whether to pull the courgettes and sunflowers up and start again or persevere.

I tried feeding them last week and the beans have responded to that.

Any suggestions welcome.

Hi Hungry Caterpillar

Do both if you can. Persevere with the ones you have
but start some other off in pots if you haven't the room
in the bed. Can't really advise on Sun Flowers but
generally the courgettes get the message and start
growing.
Most of mine are on the off now and I am starting to
harvest and it's been pretty dry down here too - (except
for last night!). I put the old plastic bottle beside the
plant and water through that just to make sure reaches
the roots.

Good Luck - Hang in there.

Westi

I am surprised to hear of slow squashes in the mild Southern areas of the UK. All my squashes in Glasgow, both summer and winter, are romping away with several flowering already. Indeed I ate my first courgettes today, several weeks earlier than usual.
I do cheat slightly, by covering them for the first couple of weeks with a Lidl tunnel, but have removed that now to allow the bees to pollinate the flowers.