gardengrl3
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Posts: 36
Joined: Fri Jun 04, 2010 6:28 pm
Location: long beach california

Zucchini help!

I think I mad a big mistake with my zucchini plant! I cut off some of the big leaves so it can get more sun-it is sharing a raised garden bed with my tomato plants so I was worried the tomatoes were blocking the zucchini from the sun. Now I have noticed that the zucchini that were growing now are soft and falling off! Can anyone tell me what the problem is here? Me cutting too many big leaves or is it something else??

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rainbowgardener
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Joined: Sun Feb 15, 2009 6:04 pm
Location: TN/GA 7b

The tomatoes shading it could have been a concern... but then you might have wanted to cut back a little of the tomato foliage.

What you want to get the sun is the zucchini leaves! Basic plant biology summarized: chlorophyll in the leaves captures energy from the sun and through a complicated series of steps, turns it into chemical energy and then into sugars, food for the plant, which the plant uses to grow and reproduce (ie make zucchinis). No leaves, no food. The zucchini fruit has no use for sunshine itself and in fact does better protected from the sun.

I'm guessing that is what caused the problem... the zucchini fruits, with too much sun exposure dehydrated some, lost water making them more limp.

But I don't know that for sure... There are other things that could have happened. If these are just little 2-3" zucchinis, it could be that the flowers were never pollinated (have you seen any bees around them). The female zucchini flowers come with a little baby zucchini fruit behind them. Sometimes even though the flower is not pollinated, the fruit keeps growing for a little while then shrivels, softens and drops off.

garden5
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Posts: 3062
Joined: Fri Aug 07, 2009 5:40 pm
Location: ohio

How many leaves did you prune off ( 1/5 or 3/4) and how big are/were the zucchini that started having problems?



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