Zucchini is the super versatile vegetable that’s great for a beginner garden, best started in the fall. Though early summer with extra watering is fine too. It comes in green, yellow, a mix between both and sometimes white! It's in the magical dish from our favorite Disney film, Ratatouille, great for stews, frying, sauté, and salads. You can, can it, dry it, freeze it. It’s an upgraded cucumber, honestly. I love it, we cook it almost every day for our omelets or dinners with some mushrooms tossed in browned butter. You can find it at almost any grocery store, but growing it yourself is even better. Usually the stores have smaller, palm length but every time I grow it at home, this amazing squash grows quickly to the size of a forearm. And did I mention baked goods? No? Zucchini cake, bread, cookies. Oh my gosh, if you haven’t had zucchini bread or cake, you’re missing out! It competes with chocolate, hands down!
You can pick up seedlings from your local nursery or pick up some seeds and grow yourself. They take only about 55 days or six weeks to mature. You do have an option to grow in a container or in the ground. You need to be sure to get at least a five gallon or 36 inch deep container, drill some holes in the side about two inches up, giving them a slight reservoir, but also drainage. Or give them at least a foot space between plants for a ground garden. The best soil I’ve found is one part mulch, two part garden soil, and a good couple handfuls of fertilizer all mixed up. For containers this fills it up to just a couple inches below the rim, leaving some room to top with a good mulch to maintain moisture later. Then we’re going to put the seeds (about three) or seedlings (one plant per space) about three inches down and bury with the mulch. Mulch helps keep the moisture but also helps to prevent weeds. Then we water it, till the soil is damp, not soaked. We don’t want to drown the seed. If the weather is cooler, water once a week, just checking if the soil is damp. If it's dryer or hotter, you may need to water a couple times or three times a week.
Before you see the vegetable, you’re going to see the zucchini grow leaves and yellow flowers. Now we’re going to learn a bit about the flowers, some are male, some are female. This is important to note because the female blossoms produce the vegetable. The males are pollinators. Males have no bulb, females do. Females will show a green round or oval growth that will be the zucchini later, males often have yellow or no bulb just below the flower petals. We’re going to pop a few of the males off, we don’t want to take all of them because the females need the pollination, and we’re going to rub these popped flowers onto the females to hand pollinate before tossing them. Or eating them, you can eat zucchini flowers. They’re great stuffed with cheese and baked, sautéed or even eaten raw in a salad. They’re packed with vitamin C, A and fiver with only about 20 calories a flower. There’s a bit of iron, about 2% which is always nice to have as an added boost. So now that the females aren’t competing with the males, you’ll start to see the stems grow oval just below the flowers or flower buds and that is the zucchini to be. Little baby zucchini! They may be ready to pick as early as a week from this stage! And all you’ve done is plant, pollinate a bit, and water. Super simple, isn’t it!
Now there are some things to be wary of which is why a lot of seasoned gardeners recommend planting more in the fall than the summer, and that’s because of zucchini munchers - Squash bugs! These little pests like to attack the plant when it's young. They also have a foul odor when squished just like stink bugs. They tend to walk around the plant, though they can fly. They’re flat backed and can grow to be over a half inch long. They’re usually dark gray to dark brown in color, though younger ones can be more gray with black legs. They often have orange stripes on their sides or underbelly and congregate in groups. It's critical to catch them young, before they grow into adults if you can. You should pick them off the plant, drop them
into a bucket of soapy water and once they’re dead, dump them elsewhere.
Same with the eggs, scrape them off with a butter knife. Unfortunately this is the best method, adult squash bugs don’t mind insecticides and there isn’t really a home remedy to kill them by spray. You can help protect your young plants by cutting a bottle open and sticking it
over top of the seeds or seedlings, kind of like a mini greenhouse. But don’t worry, just check your plant weekly and do your best, for the most part, these plants are hardy.
When it's ready to harvest you can twist the zucchini off, or clip them, take em’ inside, wash up and enjoy the fruits of your labor! Let me know if you’ve grown zucchini before, or if this will be your first time, and send us all the pictures! We’d love to see how your plants are growing! As always, we’re here for the vegetables!