HOW TO GROW COURGETTES FROM SEED |The Garden of Eaden

Although considered to be a vegetable, courgettes - otherwise known as zucchini - are actually the immature fruit of a marrow squash – more specifically, the swollen ovary of the female flower. Courgettes can be yellow, green or light green, and generally have shape similar to a ridged cucumber, although there are a few cultivars available that can produce a rounded or bottle-shaped fruit.

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Like all summer squash, courgettes can trace their ancestry back to the American continent, however the varieties of squash typically known as ‘courgette’ were actually developed in Italy - many generations after their introduction from their country of origin. The first records of courgettes in the United States date back to the early 1920s - almost certainly brought over by Italian immigrants.

Courgettes prefer heavier soils, and will always do best in a sunny, sheltered position - away from cold winds. When it comes to preparing the ground, it is well worth adding plenty of well rotted farm manure before hand – in fact, this can be done as early as the previous autumn.

.If you intend starting early, you can protect your seedlings by planting under a cloche. It is a good idea to put your cloche in place where you plan to plant your courgette plants a couple of weeks before you need them as this will to help warm up the soil below. Doing this will greatly increase your early planting chances of success.

If you are going to sow your courgettes from seed directly into the ground then you can do this any time from early May onwards – around about the time of the last late frosts. With cloches you can sow courgette seed up to three weeks earlier.

The trouble with courgettes is that they like lots of moisture around the roots, but ironically the plants can rot off if there is too much moisture around the base of the plant. To try and overcome this, courgettes are often grown on ridges in order to improve drainage – how to make a courgette ridge is outlined as follows.

.Begin by digging a small trench about 4 inches deep, then fill the bottom of this trench with well-rotted farm manure until the trench is refilled back to its original soil level – now dig over the trench so that the compost and soil is nicely mixed. Now dig a second trench next to this first one placing the soil along to top of the original trench so that you a have formed an elongated mound. This will form a ridge into which the courgette seeds can be planted into - 3 ft apart. Alternatively, if you are only growing a few courgette plants, just make one individual mound per plant roughly 1ft 6in square. These mounts do not need to be too high - no more than a few inches at most.

When sowing courgette seed outside, sow two seeds per planting position – covering with ½in of soil. Each planting position should be about 3 ft apart. When the seeds have germinated they can be thinned out by removing the weaker of the two vigorous seedlings. If you are transplanting courgette seedlings, then they should be planted into the ridge at the same depth as they were in the pot.