Ok so maybe I got a little carried away this spring. I have about 150 feet of retaining wall that circles my front yard so I thought gee wouldn't it be neat to have sunflowers going all around the yard. A couple pounds of black oil sunflower seeds later, I had thousands of new sprouts (ok so I seeded a bit thick) and I looked at them and thought gee if I am going to be watering these anyway why not put some zucchini along the row to keep the soil shaded and use this wasted space.One thing I should admit to up front is that I am a bit of a seed addict. Between what I have bought, harvested, and traded for on Gardenweb back in the day, I have hundreds upon hundreds of varieties of seeds laying around. Some of these are getting a bit old and their germination rates are declining as a result. I tend to take these older seeds and mix them up together by type into mystery mixes that I then sow liberally in any open nooks and crannies in the garden. There is something about waiting to see just what a plant is going to produce that adds even more magic to the wonder of growing fresh veggies. So I grabbed my jar of mixed zucchini seeds and popped a seed into the ground every foot or so along the row of sunflowers and called it a day.
A month or so later, once things had started to fill in a bit I took a few minutes to walk the yard and take a head count on how many of the zucchini had actually come up. By the time my count hit 89 plants it occurred to me that I was in a little bit of trouble and that maybe I had planted a few too many. This would probably be a good time to mention that I am allergic to zucchini plants. Every time I touch the little spiky bits on the stems or the hairs on the squashes themselves I break out in an annoying itchy hives in that spot for the rest of the day. So picking zukes while digging through monster leaves that can be a foot or more in diameter is a bit of a nightmare, doing it 90 times a day was not something I was looking forward to. Washing those zukes is even worse as I have to lose the protective gardening gloves. Oh yeah, did I mention I am allergic to latex too and have yet to find those long yellow rubber gloves in a vinyl so I have to bare hand it. So harvesting dilemma aside, I was looking at a yield of 20 or more zucchini a day give or take.
On the bright side, I live in the middle of town so there are people nearby who always welcome fresh veggies. I have about a dozen friends and family at last count that get random bags of zucchini about twice a month and that really helps. Bunnies and ground squirrels also help themselves regularly, and I lost 5 or 6 plants to a persistent pocket gopher. My chickens and turkeys have become squash snobs and now are so uninterested in getting any more that they barely touch the stuff unless it is chopped fine or cooked. My aunt visits regularly (I have internet and she doesn't) and is a good sport and will pick for me if I have not forced myself to yet. We disagree over what is picking size though and she only cuts those with a withered blossom so I get a lot of monster squash on her watch.There is a moral to this story, I promise, I think it has something to do with moderation and finding really good zucchini recipes. So keep an eye out on this blog for ideas on what to do with your spare summer squashes, I am sure to come up with a few!
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