'Willpower & sheer idiocy combine in harmony'
Con your family into eating courgettes if you have a glut
COURGETTES, one of the prettiest of vegetables, are not to everyone’s taste. And even if they are, you can get heartily sick of them.
After 2013's three varieties, I cut it back to one last year - just two plants, at the request of my family, who are not courgette fans. Two plants are quite enough to supply an average household.
I stuck with my usual Cavili (pale green with a creamy flesh), which I had left over from last year, but Thompson & Morgan has dropped it from its catalogue, which is a shame.
I grow Cavili because it is parthenocarpic - it has the ability to set fruit without pollination. It manages to perform even when weather conditions are dull and chilly - more often than not in NE England.
People are often stuck with what to do with courgettes - you can only put up with so many fritters - and life is too short to stuff them, or their flowers.
Make sure you pick them young and tender, about 6” long.
However, courgettes, like carrots and beetroot, make excellent, moist cakes. It’s my advice to tell no-one what’s in a recipe. What they don't know won't hurt them.
There's two courgette cake recipes in my COOK section - spicy chocolate and citrus drizzle.
They're both really good at using up courgettes you forgot to pick, when you find yourself with huge, tasteless marrows.
Courgettes & butternut squash
SOWING TIME: April-May under glass in a heated propagator, one seed sown sideways in a 3" pot. Grow on under glass in cooler conditions, before hardening off after the last frosts and planting outside.
HARVESTING TIME: July-October.
PLANTING DISTANCE: 90cm (3ft) apart.
ASPECT AND SOIL: Full sun, light, well-drained. Keep well watered, feed once a fortnight with tomato fertiliser.
HARDINESS: Tender.
DIFFICULTY: Moderate - can be badly affected by poor weather conditions and powdery mildew if damp or crowded, and Cucumber Mosaic Virus.
RECOMMENDED VARIETIES: Cavili (pale green); Defender; Black Forest; Venus; British Summertime; Soleil; Partenon (all dark green); Sunstripe (yellow/white stripes); Eclipse (round green, striped); Zephyr (yellow, pale green ends); Parador (yellow).
Grow at a glance: courgettes
Courgettes Cavili and golden Parador.
Three Sisters planting
GROWING sweetcorn, squash and beans together is the traditional Native American Indian growing system, known as the Three Sisters.
The runner beans grow up the sweetcorn stalks, keeping them off the ground; the beans attract beneficial insects that prey on pests.
The squash acts as a living mulch, prevents evaporation and spiny varieties deter predators.
Squashing 'difficult' vegetable rumours?
I LOVE butternut squash, but my initial bad feelings about growing them have come true - an utter waste of time.
Our cool, dull summer put paid to any crop, aided and abetted by the worst year I've ever had for slugs and snails.
Some fruit did set - only to be severed by some evil monster gastropod.
Still, if you want to give them a go, Sweetmax F1 (£2.79, Mr Fothergill's) did flower and set fruit early.
Sowing indoors
I sowed mine indoors, 1.5cm (1/2”) deep, placing the seeds on their edge (they can rot), in small pots of compost - a temperature of 15-20°C (60-68°F) is ideal.
Keep the pots moist and seedlings usually appear in seven-14 days.
Grow the plants on under glass and then gradually harden off before planting out 90cm (3’) apart, after the last frosts - the beginning of June here.
Sowing outdoors
You can sow outdoors if you've got warm soil (don't do this in heavy clay) where they are to crop, 1.5cm (1/2”) deep directly into finely prepared soil which has
already been watered.
Sow two seeds on edge per position. You'll need to protect any early sowings with cloches, as they really don't like the cold.
Thin to leave the stronger plant. Water well until plants are established.
Finally, a small set fruit, just before snails sabotaged it.
