Zucchini

2010

When you have zucchini in the garden you really have it. I planted six plants, six different varieties this year (2010) – only two of them really excelled – the yellow and the round rondo. From these we still had a glut.

I planted them too close together in a bed shared with tomatoes and basil and chinese celery. I also let them grow quite large and they still tasted terrific. We really liked the round one, a very delicate flavour.

Powdery Mildew: yellow lady birds eventually arrive to attack the powdery mildew. The other treatment is to spray with 1 part whole milk to 9 parts water every few days. Try mixing with weed tea or seasol to make this a dual purpose spray.

2011

This was not a good year for anything much in the vegetable garden – a very wet cool summer. We got very few zucchini. Fortunately we still have our beautiful pickles and chutney and frozen grated zucchini from last year but it won’t last much longer.

2012

What a good year. They are taking over, I have already made pickles, fritters and omelettes. They have been plated in the side bed. The yellow was first to be ready, followed by the patty pan squash then the round yellow. December and I still haven’t had any black zucchini but it doesn’t really matter.

The powdery mildew hasn’t been such a problem this year, partly because there has been very little rain and all watering is through drippers and partly because we sprayed the fruit trees with Mancozeb and used the rest on the zucchini. I have already got some yellow lady birds eating any fungus that develops so the early hit with the Mancozeb seems to have given everything a good start.