View from the Vegetable Patch
Little used courgette: Tasty and versatile, it’s a veg that’s easy to cultivate and fun to use in recipes
The courgette is the vegetable that keeps on giving.
Grow just a couple and you’ll have enough to feed your family and give away dozens to your neighbours, leaving them on the doorstep if social distancing measures are still in place when the plants start to crop.
Germinate the seeds on a warm windowsill in individual pots and harden them off before moving outdoors, planting in a sunny, sheltered spot.
Courgettes do best in good soil and you can boost the chances of fertilisation by removing pollen from a male flower with a small paintbrush and dusting it over the female blooms.
Feed with tomato fertiliser every couple of weeks once the fruits start to swell, then pick these while young and before they get a chance to grow into tough marrows. If you have got a bumper crop then chop the fruits up small and cook them with tomatoes and garlic to make a tasty pasta sauce that keeps well in the freezer.
The best addition to this sauce is basil and if you grow enough you can also make your own pesto, which will be much tastier than anything that comes out of a jar.
Growing from seed also gives you the chance to grow some of the many different kinds that are hard to track down in the supermarket.
Basil comes in a whole range of exciting flavours including, lemon, cinnamon and aniseed and it’s fun to grow more than one in order to taste the difference that they make to recipes.
Sow it under glass or on a windowsill and either keep on growing it here or find it the sunniest spot in the garden.
If you are struggling to find space to grow vegetables, then look for varieties that have been bred to grow in containers and on balconies.
There’s a good selection of these to be had now and they’ll give a good crop in a tight spot.
And if you’ve got a wall, then consider transforming it into a planting area by using planting pockets made from textile fabrics.
These are best for herbs, salads and strawberries, none of which need deep soil.
Just remember that these pockets will dry out very quickly, so get ready to water them frequently and to add feed, too, as this will quickly be washed out of the compost.