Zucchini bounty

No, I don't have a bounty out on the head of some zucchini... but I might pay you to take some of these zukes off our hands!


This is the harvest I picked this morning. When I went down to the garden to pick, I absolutely could not believe the sheer volume of fruit that was waiting for me on those zucchini plants! You can see the one on the left is humongous. There's another one like that still over in the garden - didn't have enough room to carry it back with me!


Here's the huge one cradled in my arm, just to give you an idea how big it is. It weighs 5 pounds. I don't know what I'm going to do with it because it isn't going to be worth a darn to eat (when they get this big they become very fibrous and no longer delicious). I think it's destined for the compost pile, sadly.


This book has been getting quite a workout in our kitchen this year. We made up many jars of black raspberry jam about a month ago, Dave has done up some pickles, and I just made pickled zucchini. I've never tried them before, but I figured what the heck? What else am I going to do with all these zukes? Make a pizza with them? Yes, please. I made a lovely, sauceless pizza today with the tiniest slices of zucchini on top, and mushrooms, and fresh basil and mozzarella and provolone cheeses, and lemon juice and salt and pepper. On fresh, homemade dough (I was inspired by this delicious-looking nonsense over on Smitten Kitchen, my new favorite recipe blog). It was devine.

For photos of the pickling and the pizza pie, head on over to my new photo blog (pickle pics today, pizza pics tomorrow)!

Anatomy of a squash

DID YOU KNOW... that there are male and female flowers on squash plants?

The female flower must be pollinated by the male flower in order for the squash to grow. Bees aid in pollination. If there aren't enough bees around to do the job, then the female flowers have to be hand-pollinated. If pollination is not achieved, the squash will begin to grow, but soon wither and die off. The pollination process is what causes the seeds inside the squash to grow, which, in turn causes the squash to grow (at least, this is my understanding of the process; if I'm wrong, please let me know!). If the seeds aren't fertilized, the plant basically aborts the fruit.

We have 3 ginormous zucchini plants growing in our garden this year. The cultivar name is "Space Miser," and they are supposed to take up little space in the garden. Not true. They have spread way out and are threatening to overtake nearby pepper plants and corn, even though there was plenty of room in between them all when we started.


male zucchini flower


male on left, female on right


Inside the female flower




Baby zuke

Hopefully I'll be making some pickled zucchini soon.

Next time, I'll show you what else is growing in our garden!

P.S. Is anyone having trouble viewing my pages since I added the "ferny" background over the weekend? One reader mentioned a problem, and I wonder if it's happening to others. The ferny stuff should only show around the outside edges, with a solid blue background behind the text. If you're having problems, please let me know what browser your using so I can try to trouble-shoot. Thanks!