Diseased Cucurbits?

Clumber1 · May 2020

I have 3 courgettes and 1 squash planted out - they are all suffering from the same leaf disintegration as shown in the pictures above. The first picture is from the squash and the other 2 from the same courgette plant.

All the plants had a slight problem with powdery mildew but I removed the affected leaves and they seemed to recover well.

The courgettes are all producing male flowers but they appear to be wilted and dead about a day after flowering (middle picture). I have grown courgettes before but can’t remember if this is normal.

If anyone can tell me what might be wrong with the plants I’d greatly appreciate it.

BobTheGardener · May 2020

It's normal for flowers to only last a day or so. The soil looks a bit dry so make sure you are giving them enough watering - it's almost impossible to over-water courgettes and squash!

Clumber1 · May 2020

BobTheGardener said:

It's normal for flowers to only last a day or so. The soil looks a bit dry so make sure you are giving them enough watering - it's almost impossible to over-water courgettes and squash!

Thanks for the reply. I thought that was the case with the flowers but because of the discolouration on the leaves I was obviously seeing problems where the weren’t any.

They didn’t get any water yesterday because of the wind. Some of the larger stalks were getting snapped by the stronger gusts so I quickly covered them with wheelbarrows and the largest containers I had. In hindsight I should have watered around the makeshift wind guards anyway.

Theyve been planted out a week today and apart from yesterday they’ve had a daily morning watering of 10 litres, shared between 3 plants and poured directly into craters Iv made beside each plant. Is this to little still would you say?

Diseased Cucurbits?

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