Zucchinis Taking Over
One of the things that I enjoy most about gardening is watching plants grow and produce. Fruits and vegetables that are annuals grows especially fast. For example, the green zucchini I planted back in mid-March as a 3 inch tall transplant has now grown so large, it is taking over one of the raised beds in our vegetable garden (see middle of top picture). It is crowding the onions and cantaloupe I planted nearby. I have trimmed off some of its leaves to stop it from shading nearby plants.
Apparently, I put too many plants in this 6′ x 7′ raised bed. But with only two small raised beds for growing vegetables, it’s hard to sacrifice some of the plants that I want to grow. A single cluster of only two green zucchini plants needs a lot of space. They are producing so many zucchinis I am giving some away.
The yellow zucchini that I planted in mid-April is a much more manageable size so far (see bottom picture and far left of top picture). It is producing less than half as many zucchinis as the green one. I have decided that two clusters of zucchini plants produces too many zucchinis for two people to eat, unless you want to have zucchini for dinner nearly everyday. I am more inclined to make a vegetable stir fry with zucchini once or twice a week. Next year, I am going to plant only one cluster of yellow zucchini because of its more compact size, and I will not plant any green zucchini.
June 14 2009 04:22 pm | Zucchini
Bernice on 25 Mar 2010 at 3:20 pm #
I have never been able to pollinate my squash. How do you pollinate yours.
admin on 25 Mar 2010 at 3:36 pm #
I just let bees do it. Despite all of the stories in the media about bees dying out, we seem to have plenty of honey bees in our area. However, you can cross pollinate by hand if you don’t have any or enough bees.