🥒 Understanding pollination in courgettes

Courgette is a monoecious plant, which means that it produces male and female flowers on the same plant, but separately.

• The male flower can be recognised by its slender stem. It contains pollen, but will never produce courgette.
• The female flower, on the other hand, can be distinguished by a small miniature courgette just below the flower. For it to develop, it must receive pollen from a male flower.

In the wild, bees and other pollinating insects are mainly responsible for this transfer. But when activity is low (wet weather, few flowers around, urban space...), hand pollination becomes your best ally.

🌼 Spot and differentiate flowers

• Male flowers often appear first. Look for those that don't have a mini-vine at their base.

• The female flowers come next. They carry this little embryonic courgette, and are therefore your future harvest!

They open in the morning and only stay open for a few hours. So you need to be early and act quickly, often before noon.

✋ The simple technique of manual pollination

You have two options:

1. With a fine brush or cotton bud:

• Gently take yellow pollen from a male flower (in the centre, on the stamen).
• Apply this pollen to the sticky pistil of the female flower (in the centre of the flower).

2. By hand, with the male flower:

• Pick a freshly opened male flower.
• Gently remove the petals.
• Dab the stamen of the male flower directly onto the pistil of the female flower.

You can repeat the operation with 2 to 3 male flowers per female flower to maximise the chances of fertilisation.

🌤 A few more tips to optimise pollination

• Encourage pollinators: plant melliferous flowers around your courgettes (lavender, marigolds, nasturtiums...).
• Water regularly but not excessively: a good water balance supports flowering.
• Avoid excessive humidity: too much rain or watering on the flowers can harm the pollen.
• Remove wilted flowers: this allows the plant to concentrate its energy on the fruit.

🧺 And then? Observe, harvest... and start again

A few days after pollination, you'll see if the courgette starts to grow. If it stays small, turns yellow or falls over, it's probably not been properly pollinated.

The good news is that courgettes are extremely productive: with a little care, you can carry out several cycles of hand pollination and harvest throughout the summer.