Courgettes

[Millymollymandy]

21 plants????????!!!!!!!!!! Why?

[red]

I thought I was over the top with 10 plants.... only 9 germinated and one died and one looks sickly - so I have 7 and that is still prolly 6.5 plants too many!

do love courgettes though.

make courgette pasta sauce - chop up and fill a medium pan, sling in a slug of olive oil and 2 cloves of garlic, cover and simmer until its all gone soft. ad a little water.. stir around, then throw in a handful of basil leaves and a slug of cream - serve with pasta - done!
you can freeze it at the before putting in the basil stage.. later - in say.. January.. when you are ready to face courgettes again.. warm up.. and then throw in basil and carry on as before...for a no hassle dinner.

[Berti]

you can make it in long shreds with a lemon peeler, and serve it as spaghetti strands , with tomato sauce :)

berti

[SueSteve]

21 plants????????!!!!!!!!!! Why?

LOL!
Well its a bit of a long story, but when the first lot, after 2 wks, didn't germinate I planted another load! The same happened again, nothing.
I then planted lot no. 3.
Each time I planted 7 types, one of each.
At the end of May I came back from Holiday! And lots had germinated, and over the next week the lot of them germinated!!
So.... We have lots of courgette plants

[SueSteve]

Today, we had spag bol, with lots of courgettes in the sauce.
I think I will explore courgette bread tomorrow!

[Meredith]

I don't do anything complicated with mine. I chop them up into the chunks I am likely to want to use and put them in the freezer. I don't blanche them or anything.

Use them as you would normally, okay, they don't have the same crunch anymore but for stir fry and similar they are fine.

Meredith.

[Millymollymandy]

21 plants????????!!!!!!!!!! Why?

LOL!
Well its a bit of a long story, but when the first lot, after 2 wks, didn't germinate I planted another load! The same happened again, nothing.
I then planted lot no. 3.
Each time I planted 7 types, one of each.
At the end of May I came back from Holiday! And lots had germinated, and over the next week the lot of them germinated!!
So.... We have lots of courgette plants

That's courgettes for you!

Now can someone who paid attention in biology class at school please explain to me why I am only getting one in about every 3 courgettes actually getting pollinated? I have one plant on its own away from the other plant which has only just started flowering. I can't understand it because I never had unpollinated courgettes before? There's loads of insects inside the flowers.

I would have thought that I need to have a male and a female flower open at the same time, but experience tells me that this kind of plant (squash, cucumber, courgette, melon) has a load of male flowers to start with then nearly all female flowers afterwards.

[contadina]

I love having a courgette glut. Yesterday we had courgette and tomato gratin (fry courgettes until transparent and mix with pulped tomatoes, cover with breadcrumbs and or cheese and bake until bubbling. Tonight we had zucchini frittata (baked courgette omelette). Recipe below

4 good sized courgettes, a handful of courgette flowers, 4 large eggs, breadcrumbs, pecorino or parmesan cheese, olive oil and seasoning to taste

Chop the courgettes into matchsticks. Add a little salt (it helps bring out excess moisture) and fry in olive oil until soft, stirring occasionally. Add the flowers in strips, if using, (they add a subtle sweetness) and cook for a further two minutes. Beat the eggs until mixed and add seasoning and grated cheese. Add this to the cooked courgettes with enough breadcrumbs to create a non-sloppy consistency. Put more oil into an ovenproof dish and bake for 30 minutes at 375 degrees F (190 degrees C/gas 5).

[SueSteve]

Thats great, thanks for rthe recipies.
Last night I put courgettes in my curry!
Today will be raw courgettes in a salad for lunch and steamed courgettes for dinner. We stilll have choc. courgette cake left form the other day, but I might make some more today or tomorrow.
Sue

[chadspad]

I would like to know the answer to your question too M3 as Im having similar probs with squashes!

[frozenthunderbolt]

The VERY best thing to use cougetttes for (and green tomatoes) is CHOCLATE CAKE
Get a good recipie, cut the sugar in it by 1/5th add an extra 1/2 again of coco and then corsley grate 3 small or one large (30-40 cm ish) cougette and add it to the mix - should be aroud 2 cups of it. ish.

Lightest moistest best chock cake ever. might well work for other cakes but ive never bothered trying it