Ha! Breda planted zucchini, and now it's taking over. Serves her right.
I planted zucchini once, in a fertile Louisiana bottom-land garden. Inside a month it had strangled the garden and taken over two acres of pasture. It was climbing pecan trees and theatening to strangle the cattle while they slept. It was worse than kudzu, like Jack's Beanstalk run amok.
I'll never again be so weak as to plant zucchini.
I was originally thinking of planting some hot peppers this year. If the vegetables can plan to take over, maybe it's just as well I didn't.
ReplyDeleteI've long maintained that for any recipe calling for zucchini you can substitute wet newspaper.
ReplyDeleteAround here, you have to keep your car windows rolled up and doors locked to keep someone from putting zucchini in it. Still, they won't take over the planet. The blackberry is already doing that.
To control zucchini, you will need to build hills to plant them on, no rows. Each hill is about 6-8 feet wide, and maybe 14-16" high.
ReplyDeleteRule one: plant ONE zucchini start on each hill, ONE only.
Rule Two" Keep track of how many flowers are produced on the plant. Each flower become one squash. You shouldn't have more than a dozen squash growing at once, snip off the flowers over that number as you harvest the squashes.
Enjoy your zucchini, but eat the squash while they are small, if they get over a foot long, they lose their sweetness, and if they get the size of footballs, only good for canning, and then only if you remove the bitter insides.
Be active with your hoe to control the plant on it's hill and never let it off the hill!
Three years ago the people who lived behind me were Somali immigrants. They thought they'd hit the mother lode when they discovered zuccini. The Somali's have moved away, but the zuccini life on in the green belt between our joined lots and the street behind. There must be several hundred in there, seemingly choking out the blackberries and bindweed. I've begun harvesting the little ones, I actually like zuccini cut on the bias and steamed, or battered and fried. And I'm pretty much always up for free food.
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