Zucchini are not difficult to grow and they are known for their insanely high yields. About three plants can usually provide a small family with these versatile vegetables all summer long. You can pre-sow them starting in April, but don’t start too early or they may grow out of their pots. This is because it is a fast-growing plant. If you want to sow them in the open ground, start from mid-May when the chance of frost has passed. So do you want to grow zucchini from sowing to harvest? Then we will explain it to you in detail in this article!
Type of zucchini
Zucchinis are vegetables that love the warm seasons. They need a lot of heat to grow into delicious vegetables with firm flesh.
There are compact, bushy or hanging varieties. Compact varieties are ideal for pots and other small spaces, while hanging varieties can climb using trellises or netting for support.
While green zucchini will always be popular, you should also try some of their more eye-catching relatives, such as those with yellow fruits, striped or ribbed fruits and even round fruits.
Where to grow zucchini
Because zucchini belong to the same genus as pumpkins, they need heat and sunlight to grow. By the way, also provide protection from strong winds so that bees and other insects can pollinate the flowers.
Because of their strong development and large leaves, they are voracious eaters. In other words, they extract a lot of nutrients from the soil. Before planting, amend the soil with plenty of garden compost or well-digested manure such as worm manure. If you don’t need it until fall, you can even plant zucchini on a compost pile. You can also make planting bags by digging a hole a few weeks before planting, filling it with compost and adding some soil and organic fertilizer. The abundance of nutrients from the fill will ensure that the plants develop strongly in it.
How do I sow zucchini?
After the last frost date, you can plant zucchini outdoors. Make a hole in the ground that is about 1 centimeter deep and plant two seeds there. Cover them with soil. To speed up the process, place a cut plastic bottle or jar on top to act as a small greenhouse. Remove the plastic bottle or jar when the seeds have germinated. Remove the weaker seedlings and leave only one in each location.
Sowing directly into the ground like this is fine, but we prefer to start early by sowing a few weeks earlier in the greenhouse under cover. So don’t do this too early because of the rapid growth of zucchini.
To start indoors, put potting soil in pots or plug trays and plant one seed on the rim of each pot or plug. They will germinate faster in a warm environment, but as long as you can provide a frost-free environment, they will eventually survive and grow.
You can also plant seeds in seed trays to sort out and pot up after germination. You do this before the roots get tangled. Fill your pots with potting soil and add it along the edges while grasping the seedling by the leaves instead of the stem.
If you don’t mind potting up young plants a few times before planting outside, you can start even earlier by sowing under a canopy, such as in a greenhouse or tunnel.
Planting out zucchini
Zucchini plants need one to two weeks of slow acclimatization before they can live outside. Put them outside in a protected area for a short period of time during the day to begin with and then gradually extend their time outside. This is called hardening off. As soon as there is no chance of freezing, you can plant them out.
Plant zucchini at a minimum distance of 60 centimeters apart. This way they have plenty of room to grow.
Planting out itself is incredibly easy. In the prepared soil, dig a hole that will fit your seedlings. Do make sure the stem has some room, so don’t plant it in the ground up to the first leaves. Remove the young plant from the container. Place it in the hole and fill the area around it with soil. Afterwards, give your plants a generous amount of water.
By the way, a good suggestion is to place a pot right next to every plant in the garden. Then when you pour water into the pot it seeps through the drainage holes into the soil close to the roots. In addition, a mulch layer can also make the soil less likely to develop a firm crust that prevents water from penetrating, while also helping to capture and retain water.
Caring for zucchini plants
Water your zucchini regularly and add new mulch occasionally to ensure the wet soil stays in place longer. Initially, plants usually produce only male flowers, and pollination can generally be slow, especially in cool or humid conditions. You can pollinate flowers manually by moving pollen from a male flower directly to an open female flower when there are not many pollinating insects on the ground or rather in the air.
You won’t get fruit if you pollinate only the male flowers, which are the flowers without a bulge behind them. So be sure to pollinate the female flowers.
Later in the season, mildew on foliage can become problematic. To prevent the spread of this disease, water the plants well and leave enough space between them for air to circulate freely. Mildew can affect your zucchini, but don’t worry too much: plants can generally handle it.
Zucchini harvesting
Start cutting or turning zucchini while the fruit is still quite small. Smaller fruits have a denser, nuttier flesh and, believe us, they are much better tasting. If zucchinis put you off before, it’s probably because they had to grow into big watery fruits!
Check the plants often – at least every other day – and pick fruits as soon as they reach a usable size. This is the best way to avoid those oversized zucchini.
Preparing zucchini
There are an awful lot of ways to use zucchini such as in a stew, to make pasta, to grill… By the way, the flowers are also delicious to eat; in Italy, for example, they are usually stuffed and deep-fried. Indulge in one of the many dishes available on the Internet!
Buy zucchini seeds
We have a growing assortment of zucchini seeds that you can find on our seed market. The seeds are from selected suppliers with a good track record. So check out the zucchini seeds in our seed market and take on the adventure of growing delicious zucchini yourself!
