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

[curiouswombat]

I think it all looks brilliant! I always think courgettes are such pretty flowers that is a shame I'm not a big fan of actually eating the courgettes.

[kathyh]

I had no idea that courgette flowers were such a vibrant yellow or so huge. I do like courgettes and we got some round ones in our veg box a couple of weeks ago which was lucky as it meant we had a vague idea of how big they should be.

I have just removed a snail from one of the courgette pots who appeared to be a very big fan of eating them!

[manoah]

Very pretty. We accidentally grew hot peppers one year as well. No bueno.

As far as zucchini's; they grow like wildfire hear. Kinda like mint. Plant 'em and they grow. You know you can fry up the blossoms? We call them "Squash Blossoms".

[kathyh]

I've had the flowers fried in restaurants and they are delicious but they were deep fried which I deliberately don't do at home.

I hardly dare to try the chillis. Ironically they are the things that are growing most prolifically.

[newwaytowrite]

Hot peppers always welcomed in this house

[kathyh]

I like them but they don't like me. We will have to try them and see how hot they are and if they are too hot just leave them on the plant to look decorative. They have been fun to grow even if we don't eat them.

[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 :)