Lesson’s from a first time zucchini gardener

This summer I went all out and planted a garden. I thought I would be smart and plant 2 tomato plants, 2 cherry tomato plants, some red onions, 1 zucchini plant and some sweet peppers, jalapenos, and basil. I thought I had a decent sized raised garden; it is 6 x 6 after all. It wasn’t enough!!!!! No one told me how huge a zucchini plant could get. It took over half the garden seemingly overnight. I ended up pulling the cherry tomato plants, basil and jalapenos’ out then planted them in big pots. My friend Matt gave me some of his ‘secret’ fertilizer which I dutifully put on according to his instructions and my tomato plant took over the other side of the garden. So below are some lessons of my first time as anything other than a casual planter gardener.

Lesson #1: Even 1 single zucchini plant grows a ton. I thought I was doing pretty well by keeping enough space in my garden, zucchini taught me I was wrong!

Lesson #2: Zucchini are mutant freak plants. I would go out every night and cut a nice little decent sized zucchini, checking under all the big leaves to make sure I wasn’t allowing any single one of them to get to big, but they blend in! That is the mutant superpower, they blend in and become invisible and then BAM a few days later you find one 2 feet long! Where did that come from???

Lesson #3: The bigger they grow, the tougher the skin and the bigger the seeds. I found myself scooping the seeds out of the bigger ones before shredding them.

Lesson #4: Get creative with cooking zucchini. Learn to hide them in foods you feed to your husband. One night I told him I was going to make pizza for dinner and he was really excited and when I served him pizza on zucchini rounds from the air fryer he looked at me like I had broken his heart. He ate them that one time and every time I tried after that to see if he would like to have them again he pretended to not hear me.

Lesson #4: If you try to hide your zucchini from your husband don’t put it in the name of the food you serve him. Example one night I mentioned I was going to scramble up some eggs and add the fresh tomatoes from the garden and serve it in a toasted tortilla and did he want some? He was all for it until I mentioned the name of the recipe was going to be Roasted Zucchini and Tomato Breakfast Quesadilla…he ate it but only reluctantly. Another night I asked if he would like scrambled eggs with cheese for dinner but that time I got smart and didn’t tell him it was scrambled with veggies ie; zucchini.

Random zucchini and tomato dish, with local wheat bread

Trying to hide zucchini again, unsuccessfully

Final Lesson: Do bring zucchini to work and force them on your co-workers and of course shame them if they don’t take them home! But also bring them zucchini bread muffins when you make an overabundance of them. They will love it I promise.

Really this post is completely done in fun and no husbands or co-workers were force fed zucchini…very often. I would plant zucchini again next year, but I would confine it to a large pot and not my raised garden even though I’m not even sure that would stop the size that one plant gets, but that is just my opinion of course. ♥