Seed and Bean

A portion of the zucchini harvest.

It seems like everyone grows zucchini! And, why not? It’s easy to grow, it’s prolific (understatement), and its leaves provide a lovely, bold contrast to the smaller foliage of most of the other plants in the kitchen garden. It’s also easy to cook with – it can be used up front and center when stuffed and baked, it plays well with others in dishes like ratatouille, and it can be disguised with sugar and chocolate and baked into a cake. What’s not to love?

Well, for me, I’m discovering 3 plants is more than enough for my husband and I. I’ve missed a couple of days of harvesting and now have a zucchini the size of my thigh! Seriously, I’m not kidding!

Also, it’s been a wet summer and, while I’ve placed the zucchinis in the hottest part of the garden, there’s been a good amount of fruit rot and slug damage, making harvesting a sometimes icky process.

I’m growing two kinds of zucchini this year. Ronde de Nice is a French heirloom whose seeds I purchased from West Coast Seeds. It’s a cute thing – round and stripey – with unusual grey and pale green variegated leaves that really stand out in the garden. To take advantage of the shape of the fruit, in cooking I think it would work well stuffed and baked. It’s supposedly bruises easily which is why it’s not readily available in grocery stores (although you may be able to find it at some farmers’ markets). Portofino hybrid is the other zucchini I’m growing with seeds from William Dam Seeds. An Italian zucchini, it seems to be more prolific than the Ronde de Nice and its taste is usually described as nutty. But, as I mentioned, it’s BIG; if you grow this type, be prepared to get creative in your cooking because one squash is going to provide you with a lot of dishes!

Ronde de Nice zucchini hiding behind its stunning leaves.

Ronde de Nice leaves provide a striking counterpoint in the kitchen garden.

Both are, as I mentioned, easy to grow. Give them a well-draining, compost-rich soil, lots of sun, and, most important, consistent watering. In the south, you might be plagued with squash vine borer – a nasty little bug (it’s actually the larvae that causes the damage) that inhabits the stems of plants and causes the plant to constantly look wilted no matter how often you water. There are a number of recommendations to prevent the squash vine borer – prevention seems to be the key since there don’t appear to be any organic pesticides:

1. Make sure to dispose of any infected plants – and not in the compost, unless you know your compost can really heat up. The larvae inhabits the stem before burrowing into the surrounding soil and you don’t want it to just be kept warm and toasty through the winter – you want it to fry!

2. For those with the room, you can till the soil. I’m not so keen about this method since I think one should disturb the soil as little as possible to allow the micro-organisms and mycorrhizae to do their thing but if you’re desperate and have been battling the squash vine borer for a while, you might want to try it as a last-ditch effort.

3. The adults are considered a moth and, when they emerge from the soil in about June, they lay eggs at the base of the plant. You can put down floating row covers over the plant to prevent the moths from laying eggs but, if you’re worried that pollinators won’t be able to get to the flowers, you can try…

4. …Wrapping the stems in nylon pantyhose to prevent the larvae from chewing its way in.

5. Once you know you have squash vine borer larvae (those wilting leaves), sometimes you can remove them by hand. Make a slit in the stem and, after digging the larva out,  cover the stem with soil to promote root formation.

Here in the north, this summer, the squash vine borer is not my problem – slugs are. I made a tactical error and planted too close together – space the plants about 2 feet apart – and then we had a wet growing season. The big leaves shade the soil and provide a moist environment for the slugs that proceed to chew to their heart’s content. I take great delight in stomping on them, proving yet again that gardening is not a gentle art.

I’ve been really looking forward to the zucchini this year, maybe because I could never grow it very successfully in Texas, and last year, the first year for the northern garden, I didn’t plant it because I didn’t grow my own transplants and had to rely on what was available in the garden centres. They’re an easy thing to start inside and you can find my tutorial series on seed starting here:

on containers http://www.seedandbean.com/blog/?p=500

on shelving http://www.seedandbean.com/blog/?p=511

on lighting http://www.seedandbean.com/blog/?p=575

on hardening off http://www.seedandbean.com/blog/?p=728

I’ve already used the Portofino in a couple of ratatouille dishes and I’m definitely going to make a chocolate cake at some point. But zucchini flowers, in fact, all squash blossoms, can be used in cooking. When you’re in the mood for something different, head on over to my terribly talented friend Lisa’s blog and see what she can do with a squash blossom.

If you’re not growing it already, what are you waiting for? Jump on the zucchini bandwagon.

Over these last couple of weeks I’ve been reminded that surviving an Edmonton winter is nothing compared to surviving an Edmonton spring!  A week of warm weather that prompts the pulling off of sweaters and putting on of shorts is abruptly terminated by a week of temperatures barely hovering above the necessity of a parka, and I, along with my tomato, tomatillo, pepper, basil, cucumber, and zucchini plants, are all struggling to adapt.

Zucchini blossoms

Tomatillo blossom

Tomato blossoms

Lemon basil cold damage

I admit, the plants are having a tougher time hardening-off than I am.  Because we have yet to create sweaters for basil plants, some have leaves that are slightly blackened in spots (a sign that temperatures have been too cold for them).  Two out of the four lemon cucumbers I started informed me, in no uncertain terms, that they were unhappy by quickly wilting and then, just as quickly, by dying (wimps!).  The peppers won’t let me know for a while whether they’ve been affected – if they have, they’ll delay blossoming until they feel they’ve met their heat quotient and, if I’m lucky, push out a few fruits before the temperatures drop again.  My heart goes out to the tomatoes and the tomatillos though – they’ve been so eagerly growing, pushing out flowers, clearly anticipating their new life out in the garden (in the newly renovated beds we recently constructed).  But they’re weathering the disappointment the best of all of them except maybe the zucchini; they’ve started to open up some exuberant, relentlessly cheerful blossoms, optimistically hoping for, I guess, a winged pollinator to stop by – but it’s too cold for even a house fly. 

So the hardening-off process will have to start all over again – when the nightime temperatures don’t fall below 10 deg. C.  Usually I start hardening-off my plants by putting them outside in a shaded spot for about four hours when the day time temperature is about 15 deg. C.  I gradually extend the time the plants spend outside and, by the second week, when I start leaving them outside overnight, I move them into a sunnier spot during the day.

If only I could toughen myself up in a similar way…please let spring arrive soon!

I’m going to be writing a short series on the importance of, and how to build, healthy soil.  Most newbie gardeners don’t see it as a sexy part of gardening – it’s not colorful or pretty but dirty and, sometimes, icky.  Because I can geek out over the lovely, rich, dark stuff and become as passionate about it as if it were chocolate, I’m hoping I can change a few minds.

One of the best, if not THE best, pieces of gardening advice I ever received was that before I spent a dollar on a plant, I should spend a dollar on the soil that plant goes into.  Now, that came from Austin’s organic gardening guru, John Dromgoole, a man with a highly successful garden centre that sold a plethora of organic soil amendments but it still makes good sense.  Soil – my first soil science prof in college always became outraged when any of us newbie landscapers called it ‘dirt’ – is, for most plants, its nutrient system, its physical support system, its home; how healthy that soil is determines how healthy that plant is, how well it can fight off diseases, how drought-tolerant it will be, how quickly it can recover from insect damage, and how delicious its produce will taste.

That point was illustrated for me when I started my lemon basil, peppers, and tomatoes this year.  I made a quick run to the big box store for my seed starting mix – my local garden centres not being open for business yet – and was only able to get potting mix.  (For the record, there is a difference between seed starting mix and potting soil.  Generally, the seed starting mix is fluffier with less, or no, large chunks of wood, and has added fertilizer for seedling growth.)  The label on the potting soil bag said it was an “organic mix” of peat moss, compost and perlite, not an ominous sounding combination, although coir is becoming the new hot substitute for peat moss because it’s a far more renewable product but still, I didn’t think I’d have many problems.

But all compost is not created equal and the percentage of perlite in the mix, used for loftiness, was negligible, resulting in a wood-splinter-heavy and dense medium that I wasn’t sure my little seeds would have the strength to break through.  More than half of the lemon basil and half of the peppers never did but that could be because the seed is getting old.  There’s no excuse for the tomatoes though, since I used fresh seed, and they were extremely slow getting on.

So, disappointed and worried with the results so far, having spent all my dollars on seed and not wanting to jeopardize that investment, I dashed off to the (Edmonton) local gardening guru’s garden centre (now open), and queried them about seed starting mix.  Never use it, they said, have you tried these pellet thingamajigs?  I explained that I like to make my own newspaper pots for starting my seeds in and asked them what they use in the greenhouse to start seeds.  I was shown a lovely fluffy mixture that they market as potting soil, a blend of sphagnum moss, perlite, dolomitic lime, trace micronutrients, soil-wetting agents, and slow-release fertilizer (enough for 3 months). 

I promptly bought 40 litres, planted more basil, peppers, and tomatoes, and nervously watched the results.

No discernible difference between the tomatoes started on March 17 and those started on March 25.

The seedlings had no problems pushing through the medium, resulting in a much faster emergence, probably by about a week!  They’re green and healthy looking, although I have been feeding them a half-strength naturally sourced liquid fertilizer, because I’m not sure what type of or in what proportion, the nutrients are present in the potting mix. 

This uncertainty about what’s in a bag of potting mix has me frustrated!  And if I, a professional gardener, am frustrated, I can’t imagine how a less experienced gardener feels, so here’s some advice based on what I’ve learned to date…

• Don’t purchase potting mix or any kind of soil or compost mix from a big box store unless you’ve used it in the past and been happy with the results.  I purchased my potting mix from a big boxer because I thought it was my only option but, had I waited until my local garden centre opened, I wouldn’t have wasted my money – live and learn.
• Read labels.  Personally, I think soil, compost, potting mix, etc. should all have a list of ingredients – and even the source of those ingredients but, since we can’t even get source labelling on our food, I know I’m dreaming to think we can get it on something we don’t immediately put in our mouths.  The label should, at least, tell you what you can expect to see in the bag but even that’s not a guarantee.  For example, it has consistently been my experience that the cheaper the compost, the more wood chunks are in it – you don’t want a lot of wood in your compost since it throws off the carbon/nitrogen balance.  If there’s no label, as is the case for bulk soil and amendments, or you think the label doesn’t provide enough information…
• Ask questions.  Ask if they can open a bag and show you what you’d be buying.  Tell the staff what you’re using the mix for and ask if it’s appropriate.  And if they can’t tell you what is in the stuff you’ll be growing your food in, walk away.

What we grow our plants in is important.  A good potting mix allows seeds to germinate easily, doesn’t dry out too quickly, or compress when watered and remain soggy.  Potting mix isn’t, technically, soil, since it is composed of soilless ingredients.  But it’s the first growing medium that many of our cultivated plants first encounter -  get it right and you’ll have less problems down the road.