Why Are My Baby Courgettes Rotting?

Baby courgettes that yellow, go soft at the tip and drop off are almost always a pollination problem, not a disease. The tiny fruit needs pollen moving from a male flower to a female one to set and swell. If that does not happen — usually because it is too cold or wet for bees — the fruitlet simply rots and falls.

The good news: it is easy to fix, and you can do the bees' job yourself in two minutes.

Why it happens

A courgette plant carries two kinds of flower. Male flowers sit on a plain, slim stem. Female flowers have a tiny courgette already formed behind the petals. That little fruit only swells if pollen reaches it.

1. Poor pollination (the usual culprit). In a cold, wet UK spring or a dull June, bees and hoverflies stay tucked away. No insect visits means no pollen moves, so the unpollinated fruitlet yellows, softens and rots off. Early in the season plants also throw out lots of males before the first females — so even a healthy plant may have nothing to pollinate yet. That is normal; just wait.

2. Damp sitting on the fruit. In wet weather, water and spent petals cling to the blunt end of a young courgette and it starts to rot there, sometimes turning grey and fuzzy. Crowded, airless plants make this worse.

3. Dry roots (blossom end rot). Less common on courgettes than tomatoes, but erratic watering — bone dry, then soaked — can cause the end to go brown and sunken. This is the same calcium-uptake issue covered in our guide to blossom end rot. The fix is steady moisture, not more feed.

The fix

Hand-pollinate

This is the single best fix, and it works even on a dull, bee-free morning. Do it early in the day when the flowers are open.

1. Find a male flower — slim plain stem, no fruit behind it. Pick it.
2. Peel back or tear off the petals to expose the pollen-covered centre (the stamen).
3. Find an open female flower — the one with a baby courgette behind it.
4. Dab the male centre onto the centre of the female flower so pollen transfers. One male can do two or three females.

Done. Within a day or two a pollinated fruit starts to firm up and grow instead of yellowing.

Improve airflow

Give plants room — at least 90cm apart. Remove any old, mouldy flowers and the odd lower leaf if the centre is congested, so air moves through and the fruit dries off after rain. Water the soil, not the plant, to keep the leaves and fruit dry.

Water steadily

Courgettes are thirsty. Keep the soil consistently moist — a good soak two or three times a week in dry spells, more for plants in pots — rather than letting them swing between parched and drenched. Steady moisture prevents the dry-root rot and keeps the plant cropping hard. There is more on feeding and watering greedy fruiting crops in the courgette guide.

How to prevent it

Attract pollinators. Once the weather warms and bees are working, they do this job for free. Grow a few flowers nearby and avoid sprays so the insects keep coming — our guide to attracting beneficial insects shows the easy wins for a UK garden.

Be patient in a cold spring. Early fruit drop in May and June is often just the plant warming up and producing males first. It usually settles by midsummer.

Keep watering even. A mulch around the base holds moisture and stops the wet-dry swings that cause end rot.

Pick young and often. Harvest at 10–15cm. Regular picking keeps the plant productive and means less old, damp fruit hanging about to rot.

For the full sowing, spacing and feeding routine — and the other common issue, powdery mildew on courgettes — see the main courgette growing guide.

PS — if every fruit is dropping but the plant looks lush and green, do not panic and do not feed it more. Nine times out of ten it is the weather keeping the bees in. Hand-pollinate for a week and they will start to set.