Thursday 22 November 2012

Courgettes

Now I know this isn't really a garden blog, but I hope any quilty followers will forgive a brief diversion.

Louise is doing regular posts about her zucchini and I thought it might encourage ours to grow if I joined in! Now I don't think it's healthy to compare courgettes, but I must say that I can't believe how big and flowery your zucchini is Louise!

I have put in 4 courgette plants and am mildly surprised that they all seem to have not only survived but to be growing reasonably. Some even have some flower buds- I think that's them in the middle? A couple of them are beginning to look quite rangy. You can't tell here, but I dutifully planted them on a mound according to the label, but since we mulched the birds rummage about and I think have reduced the mound a bit. But I don't mind if they eat any snails and slugs the blitzem hasn't got to. I hope birds don't eat blitzem...?!

You can see our embarrassingly hopeless beetroot in the background and really our winter veges were altogether fairly hopeless. I don't know if we planted too late or what, but nothing much did that well. I'm going to pull out the leeks soon which are about the size of  spring onions and now have flowerheads! We did use a few of the celery stalks but they were really thin. Even the rainbow chard didn't really grow well- I thought that was supposed to be failsafe?!


 I have a feeling that 4 plants will take over our patch, but I wasn't optimistic of success and I can always move one or two into a pot. Can I? Should I? Will that work? Just to have it trailing down the side?
Given that this is my first ever time of growing them I feel it's a little premature to be posting recipes for my crop, but as soon as I see a baby I'll share a recipe- how about that?


This is to prove that our cucumber recovered from being eaten by snails. I have never seemn a snail or a slug in the garden, so I don't know where they hide in the day, but I should've heeded my gardening friend's advice more expeditiously, you were right Liz! One has been eaten never to be recovered, but one seems to be doing OK. But I digress from courgettes now.



 I am starting to believe we will have edible tomatoes. This is a cherry variety. I have seven plants, only 5 staked so far. The 2 littlest are to the left and right of the last one on the right. I hope I haven't planted them too close together? This is a nice warm wall and I thought maybe their leaves might shade each other's tomatoes?  Or maybe I should move the two smallest somewhere else? Advice please experts...



We went for mainly the garden centre man's recommendations- Mighty Red; but also one cherry tomato and one Tommy Toe I think it's called.


This is a promising looking mighty red-green so far...

So I'll link up with Louise and hope for her Garden Glut!

4 comments:

  1. oh i love a bit of garden no matter the blog. your well ahead on the growing front than me. my courgettes are in, but still rather small, likewise my tomatoes and everything else. your toms are prob. a bit close together, more from the needing a bit of air around them to stop them getting diseased point of view. i've just put a couple of bowls of beer in the ground in my glass house as i had something eating the strawberries and cucumber seedlings, and i've got 8 slugs and some other funny looking creature so far and the eating has stopped. happy gardening x
    ps thanks for your tag last week. i will get around to playing along sometime soon i hope...

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  2. Ooooooh I'm still traumatised by my courgette glut a couple of years ago when I was thinking of writing a "1000 interesting ways to cook courgettes" recipe book, and i was even thinking about courgette ice cream by the end of the summer.

    I wont be too upset if I don't eat another one.

    Bon courage, and send hopes that you wont get too many all at the same time.

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  3. Oh, garden envy - I'm just clearing the ground for winter:-) I agree with Max about the tomatoes, and also the beer traps! I partly bury cans of cheap lager (or the dregs:-), with just the tops sticking out - at least they die happy. Some slug/snail stuff is toxic to other animals - you could look to see if it contains metaldehyde. My beetroot did pitifully this year too, round the other side of the world.

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  4. Garden envy here too - I used to have an allotment when living in London and courgettes turned to marrows super quickly!

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