Allotments 4 All

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I’ve been very keen to try to produce seed from some courgette and squash varieties I’m growing, but have found it a much trickier operation than I realised.
I understand the basics of taping or bagging (which is better?) a male and female flower one day and then attempting hand pollination the next when the flower opens, but actually carrying it out hasn’t proved at all easy!

Some problems:

* Often there isn’t a female and male ready at the same time. After the wet weather we’ve been having it seems there’s another rush of male flowers and hardly any female
* I believe the flower opens for one day but I can’t always tell whether a female flower is about to open or has already opened and is now past its prime day. More observation needed!
* To mimic bee pollination I’ve read on another group that it’s a good idea to use several male flowers to pollinate one female
* With courgettes I need to sacrifice a plant to seed saving totally in order to let the pollinated courgette grow to large maturity for seed harvest. This is likely to stop the plant producing other courgettes for consumption young. Is this the case? Squash are OK because you can save the seed when preparing them for cooking and eating.

So all in all I’m feeling rather defeated at the moment. Has anyone been successful in this tricky operation? Any tips for carrying it out successfully would be gratefully received. It seems that time is running out for getting pollinated fruit with time enough to reach maturity.

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a copy of a letter going around.   

There is a rogue batch of courgettes out there is season, be warned

Hello everyone and I am the social media manager for Mr Fothergill’s. As posted by Mark Carroll above, we have recently become aware of this issue with a small number of people being in touch with our Customer Services team about bitter courgettes. The variety involved is Courgette Zucchini with batch code I printed on the back of the packet next to the barcode. We have withdrawn all stocks of this seed immediately, recalled all stocks in garden centres and are currently contacting customers we know to have bought this variety by mail order.

We are very sorry to hear of the discomfort suffered by anyone who has an affected plant, though there seem to be only some rogue seeds amongst the batch, with some packets causing no problem at all. As pointed out in this thread already, it has likely resulted from an inadvertent cross-pollination in the plants that produced the seeds. We would urge anyone who has a packet of these seeds to get in contact with us by email on debbie.porter@mr-fothergills.co.uk

If you have grown a plant from these seeds, you can taste-test the fruits before consuming them by cutting them a licking the flesh. Affected fruits are extremely bitter and an indication you should destroy the plant. Please do not consume the fruits of any plants that have produced bitter tasting fruits.

Thank you for your patience and understanding.