Adventures (and misadventures) in gardening

[kathyh]

I wouldn't exactly say we've totally nailed it as snails had a feast on all our marigold seedlings, the zinnias collapsed and died leaving just one and the cosmos are a bit spindly but we have had some success with other plants

Comments

[kazzy_cee]

Of course you can stuff and eat the flowers of courgettes and very nice they are too :)

[kathyh]

I've had stuffed courgette flowers in restaurants but I think they are a bit above my culinary abilities. The round courgettes are very nice stuffed but so far we only have one that is large enough.

[mairi_dubh]

Hello!

Squashes---any in that family---tend to be heavy feeders and want a lot of root room even to produce flowers, let alone a courgette, so I think you deserve a big round of enthusiastic applause unless the "box" your courgettes are in is a piano packing crate.

If getting to the level of culinary ability of stuffing and frying courgette flowers is something you think you'd like to be able to do, you'll get there by practicing. Use the male flowers, which don't bear fruit anyway, but not all of them: some have to be there, of course, to fertilize the female flowers.
If you prefer not to stuff and fry the flowers, you always have the option of putting one in a salad of greens or summer fruits. :^)

And please do forgive me if I'm preaching to the converted on short acquaintance, here.

[kathyh]

No forgiveness needed. I didn't really know that you can use courgette flowers in a salad, which sounds like a great idea. The problem at the moment is stopping the snails from eating them.

The courgettes are in large pots but I do wonder if they've got enough room. In an ideal world we would have put them in the ground but as we had very young and playful foxes in our garden it didn't seem like the plants would last too long, so they were just transferred to bigger and bigger pots. We do feel quite pleased with ourselves that we have managed to produce actual courgettes :)

[mairi_dubh]

Well, courgette or other flowers are used, to the best of my knowledge, as part of a salad, but not as salad itself and I thought that bears saying. Not all plant flowers are safe to eat, though, so check before you start dropping them in. Violet blossoms and borage flowers are normally safe (presupposes no allergies or sensitivities on the part of the diner.) And they're always on top, so they aren't smooshed or hidden

[kathyh]

Oh, thank you. That's really helpful. Yes, slugs and snails are quite a problem in the UK. They even come into the house sometimes which is really annoying. I have suggested beer traps to my husband but he isn't keen on wasting the beer :) Copper might be a bit difficult to source at the moment but eggshells should be easy so I may try and use those.

I don't want to use anything inorganic as we have birds and foxes in the garden. The foxes are extremely annoying but I don't want to do them any active harm so will try eggshells and work out how much to crush them. Many thanks again.

[mairi_dubh]

Into the house! Yikes!

We have in-ground beds, in an arrangement which deters the white-tailed deer from leaping the enclosure-trellis (they have poor depth perception and won't jump into an area which isn't clearly safe to land in ), but like you we also have containers with veg on the patio. For those, we use chicken wire to make sort of bell-shaped covers. The mesh lets in the light and rain or water, but keeps out other critters. Well, it keeps out critters such as foxes, which we don't have, but it does stop the deer who come onto the patio from munching on anything not under the protective coverings.
Sometimes poultry mesh is too large to keep out very small animals, and something like one-eighth-inch hardware cloth is needed. Must be very well secured, though, because smaller animals can squeeze through some mighty small openings, such as a gap in the mesh or screening around the pot.

You're more than welcome, and I thank you for your thank you!
Wishing you every gardening success! : ^)

[kathyh]

Thank you :) At least we don't have to contend with deer!

[mairi_dubh]

It might be worth mentioning, too, that those "bells" have to be closed at the top (and on the sides) to keep away certain animals, and they have to sit on the ground/pavement or be very snugly secured around the container so that there are no gaps.

Ah, the deer. Beautiful and graceful, and there is virtually nothing they're not willing or able to eat.