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Small squashes going brown, soft and rotting
January Man
Posts: 212
in Fruit & veg
Hi all
Sorry to be back so soon with another "what the heck is going on" type post!
This time it's about some of my small uchiki kuri squashes. The good news is that some of them have made it to a decent size and are maturing nicely. But some of the small baby ones and adolescents start by getting small brown patches like this:
And end up going fully brown and soft like this:
This isn't just now; it's been happening for the last few weeks.
Does anyone know what might be the problem and what I can do to prevent it? If not this season, would at least be good to know for future reference.
Many thanks as always
Max
0
Posts
Over watering, sitting on damp soil or lack of sunshine are three things that spring to mind here Max. Can anyone come up with alternative answers?
I think it's just normal behaviour that a lot of potential fruits die at this stage - they can't all grow to full size. I just pick them off as soon as I see they're not going to make it (or have got slug damaged). I doubt it's anything you've done wrong.
same thing happening to my pumpkins - similar plant family i believe.
everything was going really well - a number of larger fruits - plenty of new female flowers turning into pumpkins.
then for the last week, it's all stopped. every single new pumpkin doing the same thing. and now no new female flowers.
the plants have also stopped growing - they were out of control during last couple of months.
maybe it's just time - now that the colder weather is coming in.
I think I would have to agree with you Andy, it is the time of year. The temperature has dropped a few degrees here, the days are getting shorter too with less sunshine. I can only assume that perhaps you are giving them too much water or feed? We are now watering ours about once every 5 days to a week because we have had quite a lot of rain in the past week. Even that is perhaps once too often now.
However perhaps this variety of seed should have been started early so that the pumpkins could mature earlier in the summer. This summer has been a bit hopeless for some plants, some of my flowers never got to the flowering stage, dying off before the buds had opened properly.
Thanks for the helpful replies. Glad (and yet sorry at the same time) to hear that others are having this happen to their squash/pumpkins as well as me.
Someone else mentioned that it might be due to the fruit's not being pollinated, and recommended hand pollination as a solution. That hadn't occurred to me, but now that I think of it, I remember the same being true of courgettes when I looked into it a year or two ago (because the end of my courgettes were rotting).
But one thing I should add is that we have had some larger fruits do this as well, ones that are around the size of a mango. So it's not just the tiddlers.
Cheers