Kitchen Garden Forum

An aquaintance tells me that courgettes (and marrows?) start rotting from the flower down and that he always takes the flower off before this can happen. Is this so, and is it a good practice?
John N

We always pick a few courgettes when they are small and have the flowers intact. Then we stuff them with cream cheese, herbs, chillies, whatever and deep fry in a tempura batter. You can do the same with just the flowers when they are a bit bigger.

Once you leave them on the fruit for a longer time, they will rot, so take them off.

-just need a bit of info, been told i could just plant these
2 courgette plants i have straight into this horse manure
ive got is this true or should i put them in peat free compost
that i use for my planter bags.
ash

As a student I worked on a mixed farm one summer and one of the old boys had some trailing marrow plants on top of the slurry pit back of the cowshed. Used a plank to get to them, literally all the cow muck pushed along the, bare concrete floor by tractor and out a chute into the pit, no bedding of any sort.

When we emptied it end of august it was about twenty foot deep.

Hi Peter,
Not exactly Courgettes but along the same lines.
In the drought year of 1976 I grew potatoes on a gentle slope below about 2000 tons of manure and used potatoes for seed that had fallen through the riddle and sowed them along the rows like peas. The crop was absolutely extraordinary. By far the best yield I have ever had or ever likely to have again. The only maintenance was to pull up the Fat Hen before it was able to seed. The constant drainage from the manure did a fantastic job constantly feeding and constantly watering underground.
JB.

To answer your question, JohnN, there is no harm in removing the flower, but be sure the flower has actually wilted before you do so. If you take the flower off while it is still fresh, you risk breaking the end of the fruit and that could lead to rotting, also. I'm not entirely convinced that this practise reduces rotting; if the weather's cold and wet, they seem to rot from the end regardless. But the fruits do not always rot completely, the portion nearest the stem can often remain intact and harvestable.