Despite a few hiccups, growing courgettes from seed really hasn’t been that difficult. As soon as the late frosts had passed and the courgette plant was placed in the raised bed, it quickly established itself during June and has been growing well ever since.

The courgette is almost certainly my favourite plant in the garden and we have already eaten four courgettes, have another three in the fridge and four more growing on the plant itself.
Harvesting the courgettes was pretty easy after an initial confusion about how to actually cut them from the plant, sounds a little strange now but we didn’t want to kill it by accident, so I just imagined what they looked like when we had previously bought them from the supermarket.

I was surprised to go out some evenings into the garden and see monster courgettes which had basically matured into marrows because they had been left for such a long time. In a moment of curiosity I decided to weigh the ones we had in the fridge and one of them was no less than 1kg in weight!

Needless to say we are not short on courgettes for cooking, but short on recipes for meal diversity! As much as we both like roasted vegetables it’s not something you want day in day out especially during the summer.

So far our meal ideas have consisted of a courgette bake, roasted vegetables and a courgette and feta salad, all of which I would highly recommend. All ideas were super yummy and we are still in the process of collecting more recipes. I have to say that the courgettes we have had are delicious, they are fresh and juicy and seem to have sweetness that lacks from courgettes we have purchased previously.

I don’t know if any of you courgette growers out there would agree but I didn’t realise just how big the courgette plant was going to get. It is easily taking up the whole of the middle planting area in the Cultivation Station and seems to be growing along the earth as we cut the fruit blocking the light to our spring onions and carrots. Next year I might try staking the plant and growing courgettes vertically, a courgette tree if you will!