Mutton
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Help telling squash and courgette plants apart by leafSo, planted squash and courgette. Put them in different water trays and different pots. Potted on with brain in neutral and now aren't sure which is which. Wanted to plant in separate patches to make pollinating to get true breeding seeds easier.
So is there a visual difference between squash and courgette plant leaves? Been a lot of years since we last grew them ......
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OtleyLad
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The winter squashes have larger seedleaves and the adult leaves are rounder.
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Mutton
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Thanks - but these are summer squash..... 
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tahir
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Pics?
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Mutton
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Click to see full size image
I can post a bigger image if necessary.
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tahir
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The ones with the bigger rounder leaves are squashes
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Mutton
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To me, none of the leaves are round. Some are a bit pointed, some are a bit flattened towards oval.
Would be helpful if someone could point to each plant and say "marrow" "squash"
So is that squash bottom right,
the other two on the right marrow?
Middle one marrow?
Top left marrow?
Bottom left squash?
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Mutton
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Also, this other one, didn't get processed earlier. This a marrow?
Click to see full size image
(oh, and thanks btw, should have said that. )
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wellington womble
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It's no help with id, but I think you can hand pollinate and then close the flower with an elastic band to prevent further cross pollination if you don't get them definitely sorted out. I haven't done myself, I think I probably read it on Real Seeds
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Mutton
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Yes - its why I want to know which is which - hand cross-pollination. Once the fruit is formed its obvious, but the seeds might then be a marrow-squash cross (assuming that can happen) or not form if marrow-squash cross can't happen.
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wellington womble
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I expect I'm missing something, but if it came to it, couldn't you self poilinate one of each flower on each plant so that the seeds in that fruit are true? If you don't need seeds of that one you can just eat it and nothing lost, but you should have at least one fruit on each plant with true seeds, whatever it turns out to be!
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Mutton
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I thought they weren't self fertile? Like cucumbers?
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wellington womble
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I'm a bit confused (it doesn't take much!). They must be self fertile, or they can't breed true? I thought that the issue was that they were really promiscuous and cross pollinated to make rubbish hydrid seeds and you wanted true ones? I must confess to never having given it much thought...
I have always just stuck them out and let them get on with it and had great fruit set, but have never saved seed. I don't grow cucumbers, but thought that they were specially bred to be in self fertile because you specially don't want seeds in them and so you have to only sow one variety.
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Mutton
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As long as you have several plants of the same thing - e.g. a particular variety of squash - and cross pollinate between only those plants, then they breed true.
My understanding of self-fertile is that you need only one plant - as in the male flowers will pollinate the female flowers on the same plant. Some plants can do that, some can't.
The cucumber variety I grow is one from the Real Seed company, with seeds in, and is excellent.
I was pretty sure that you were supposed to pollinate between two plants and it couldn't pollinate with just the one plant. To be sure, I went to look at their web page and cannot find anything about the cucumber not being self-fertile, but maybe it is in the packet instructions and those are "somewhere". What their website tells you, and what the packet instructions tell you, overlap but are not identical.
Also with cucumber, some of the time, the plants put out a rush of male flowers which are over before the female flowers open. Not always, sometimes they overlap, but better results with several plants.
Yes, I don't want the squash to cross-pollinate with the marrow, that is why I want to be certain of which is which before I start doing the closing flowers with elastic bands, putting male flowers into female, hand pollination thing. After a certain point in the season, when they are fruiting, it will be obvious. However I was wanting to get a couple of the early squash fruits as being absolutely, definitely, pure squash, so they have all season to ripen and give me good seeds for next year.
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Mutton
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In terms of plant identification, any chance of anyone saying yes or no on the identification I did earlier in the week on the photos?
Please?
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