Over the warmer months zucchini become one of our staples and can be used widely from raw in salad to chips or roasted. We generally grow enough to freeze some for meals during the winter. Zucchini is very easy and hardy crop to grow and also gives you bountiful harvest.
Choose your Variety Zucchini
There are a few different varieties of zucchini, the yellow varieties tend to be more resistant to mold. The varieties we like to grow are black beauty and gold rush. We have found the yellow variety to have a very buttery and smooth flavour. In the future we would like to experiment with other varieties for the difference in flavour.
Sowing Zucchini Seeds
Zucchini can be directly sown or sown into seedling tray then transplanted. We Recommend in planting the in seedling trays so you can sow them when its still cool and get a head start on the season. You can sow them as early August then pot them on to be ready to be transplanted in the ground by middle to the end of September.
Where to plant your Zucchini
Plant your zucchini in the full sun in well composted garden bed with mulch. Allow room for the plant as their leaves can spread in 1.5m in diameter.
Caring for your Zucchini
Zucchini plants are very thirsty plants and also being heavy producers required lots of food, so make sure you keep the soil moist around the plant and make sure its stay well mulched. I would also recommend in liquid feeding once a week. Once the lower leaves start to die back prune them off.
Common with Zucchini
My female zucchini flowers are dropping off
There are 2 common causes for this, and they are the soil drying out and poor pollination. To rectify we would recommend in checking the soil condition, see if the water is penetrating through soil and make sure you reticulation is working. If your soil is the problem here is how to boost our soil.
As for poor pollination there are several reasons why this maybe happening. First is stand back and look at the plant can you see the yellow flowers, if you can’t prune back some of the foliage so you can see the flowers, if you can’t see the flowers there is a good chance the pollinators can’t either. Another way is to cut a male flower off, and hand pollinate the female flower. Have a look around to see if you can see any pollinators in the area or on the flower, it is a good idea to plant some plants like marigold, salvia to encourage the pollinators into your area.
My zucchini leaves have silver or grey patches on them
This is simply a sign of mature zucchini leaf
My zucchini leaves are white
This is powdery mildew, to treat spray with a bicarbonate spray. There are also other harsh sprays out there to treat it with, but I would rather destroy the plant than use these harsh sprays. To help prevent water the plant in the morning and limit the amount of water getting on the leave by watering with a drip irrigation system.
My zucchini has blossom end rot
Blossom end rot is caused by a lack of calcium. Most times this caused from not lack calcium in the soil but the fact the plant cannot uptake. This is normally caused from a lack of watering. Check you soil to make sure its retaining moisture
