italian kitchen garden design
hello everybodyin today's episode we will see how to grow zucchinihow to harvest it and i'll also throw in a nice zucchini recipe for youso to start with, here are some interesting facts about zucchiniso the container i recommend for growing zucchini is a 16'' wide container which is 15'' talland you can see the video description for the product that i generally use for all myvegetable container gardening and you'll be surprised that it doesn't reallycost much to grow in these 16'' containers the zucchini we will be planting today isthe dark green zucchini zucchini grows best when it is sowed directlyi do not recommend transplanting zucchinis
because they are very fragile plantsand you have to be very very careful if you are transplanting zucchinisi just prefer to sow them in the ground directly and all you need to do is take the seeds andspace them a little apart you can grow about two zucchinis in a containerof this size and then you can bury them just about thesize of the seed itself, not too much i've experimented with a lot of potting mixesand i finally found one that is really good value for moneyits available at most home improvement and garden storesand its called kellogg patio plus which is a great mix with great ingredientsso after planting the seeds i usually label
and add a date to all the plants that i haveplanted so i know what's growing whereand also make sure you water the plants well when the plants are at the seed stage or theseedling stage you need to maintain constant moisture whichis very important for the seeds not to dry outso in a very short time you will see the seeds have germinatedand there are two seeds which made it which is about the right thing for this sizedcontainer in the next few days, you're going to seefew leaves come out and this is the time you need to consider adding fertilizersyou can go organic and add a fish/seaweed
fertilizeror you can use one of those water soluble fertilizerswhich you just mix in water and add to the zucchini plantsthe zucchini plant will start flowing very soonat this stage you want to start feeding your zucchini plants a balanced fertilizer every3 weeks if you feed too much nitrogen to the zucchiniat this stage, its going to produce a lot of leaves but very less zucchiniand also note that the zucchini plant needs a lot of water at this stageand the zucchini plant has different male and female flowersso here you can see both the male and female
flowersnow the pollination is usually done by bees but if you don't see zucchini forming on yourplants, you need to pollinate them yourself just take a brush and then take some pollenfrom the male flower and then just sprinkle it on to the femaleflower and it will develop into a fruit so one of the most common pests on the zucchiniplant are aphids these are black aphids that you can see onthe zucchini plant and today i'm going to show you an organicway to get rid of them and this is as organic as it can geti am going to show you how to get rid of aphids
using water!yes you heard it right all you need is a garden hose with showeror a jet spray and water is all you need to get rid of theseaphids and i'll show you how just like thatjust spray away those aphids and they'll be goneyou can also hold them while you're washing so you get more controlyou can get rid of all your aphids this way and don't worry about all the water that goesto the zucchini plants they need all that water!so our zucchini plant has now started forming
nice squashi can see several here two of them right thereand zucchinis must be harvested when they are tenderthey will get very large but they will also get very fibrousso you need to make sure you harvest them at the right timenow this zucchini plant is actually pretty bigso the squash that it produces will also be bigso i'm going to wait just a couple of more daysto harvest this zucchini now remember that when the zucchini has startedforming squash
it needs a lot of watermost of the zucchini squash is comprised of waterso you need to make sure you water the plant thoroughly and deeplyotherwise your fruits are not going to form so finally it looks like its time to harvestthe zucchini they look pretty well formedand i do not want to wait till it becomes fibrousso i'm going to go ahead and harvest these two zucchinisso to harvest the zucchini i'm going to use a set of prunersjust make sure you make a clean cut there we go!that looks pretty good
nice, dark coloredits going to be a little light colored on the other side where it doesn't get a lotof sun and let's go ahead and harvest the other onezucchini flowers are also edible by the way they are actually a delicacy because you can'tbuy them in the market and here is our second zucchiniand that looks pretty good! i'm going to show you two ways to harvestzucchini the first way is to just hold the zucchiniand give it a nice twist just like thatand it comes off right away and the other way of course is to use scissorsor pruners
and make a clean cutand that's another way to harvest your zucchini so i'll see you soon in another episode ofcalifornia gardening until then...happy gardening!