COURGETTES

“I once abandoned a bucketful on the village green with a sign saying ‘Please, for the love of God, help yourself!’”

Look a veg grower in the eye in August and you’ll see a glint of mania. Usually calm, at one with nature, there’s now a flicker in their steady gaze. The courgette glut is peaking and it’s unhinged them. Which is understandable. When courgettes get into their stride, they crop relentlessly, producing two, three, four new fruits every day, a frenzied explosion of fecundity, unrelenting and seemingly infinite. And you can’t just leave them. If you do, it’ll grow and grow, ballooning to gargantuan proportions, bloated and bursting at the seams, like a green Violet Beauregarde. And then the plant will stop producing, sure that the swollen beast it spawned will secure the next generation – it’ll give up making new fruit and put all its energy into growing this grotesque, distended baby. The pressure can get on top of even the most placid gardener, their innate drive to use up the glut escalating into hysterical bouts of preserving, pickling, puréeing, freezing and foisting on unwitting neighbours. I once abandoned a bucketful on the village green with a sign saying, ‘Please, for the love of God, help yourself!’

I could sow fewer seeds. I could plant only the healthiest seedlings. I could give them less space in the patch. But I don’t do any of these things. Because, like every other gardener, I am secretly in thrall to the glut. Yes, the tyranny of it is oppressive, but deep down, in my green-fingered soul, I love the abundance. The generosity of nature, plentiful and bounteous, her easy beneficence, her richness, the sheer quantity of life – I relish it all. It is blissful, even in its tyranny.

One of the reasons courgettes are so prolific is that they are very easy to grow; bulletproof, in fact. And they are, generally, happy in pots, which makes them an ideal starter crop for new growers who don’t have much space. For pot growing, pick a bush variety which will grow neatly in its place, rather than a rambling variety that will maraud all over your balcony and attempt an escape to the flats below. If the growing spot is frost-free and sheltered, simply sow two or three seeds into the middle of a 50cm diameter container filled with peat-free compost during April. Water, and wait. When the seedlings are 5cm high, pull up the two weakest ones and leave the healthiest to grow on into adulthood, watering well and feeding weekly with liquid seaweed. It will keep a family of four in courgettes until October.

Don’t come to courgettes looking for bold flavours. What assertiveness they possess is used up in the growing. Their taste is all mildness and whichever variety you pick will taste pretty much the same as the next. They do vary in their looks, though, and given how diverse and delightful they are, that’s variety enough. Long-limbed and stripy, green and spherical, yellow and cylindrical. You can even get warty, bulbous or shaped like a flying saucer. Despots all, but handsome and worthy of a place in any garden. »