Honestly. I picked the two summer squash hills completely clean on Wednesday evening. Saturday morning, three days later, this is what I harvested. And I had already given away one of the two biggest zucchinis before I took this photo.
I know it must sound like I’ve never grown zucchini before but I have, many times. Here is this year’s story. On the Victoria Day weekend, I planted four hills of squash seed – zucchini, spaghetti, butternut and delicata. The first two took off and have done extremely well, but the butternut and delicata either failed to germinate or were eaten off before they had a chance. I didn’t want to waste the space, but by then it was mid-June so I had to grow something that wouldn’t require a long season to mature. Another hill of zucchini. I leave two plants in each hill, so all this bounty is from four plants. (The seed I used is from Pacific Northwest and the variety is Zucchini Dark Green. It does say “Heavy Yields” on the package.)
Actually, I never have too much. These are some of the ways I use zucchini:
- as a fresh vegetable, usually grilled on the barbecue or diced and fried with onions
- grated for muffins and other quick breads
- grated and quick-cooked then added to quiche-like breakfast dishes
- as an ingredient in relishes
- as one of many vegetables in the pureed soup that Jim has for lunch, day in, day out.
- for the freezer. I package and label recipe-size amounts. For soup, I peel and cut it into chuncks and blanch it, then lay it out on trays to freeze so the pieces don’t stick together when I bag them.
