In which a tutorial is requested: How To Grow Zucchini

My poor friend lytha has never been able 

to grow a good crop of zucchini on her farm in Germany.

I have never not grown squashes.  They just kind of...appear.

This pumpkin plant wasn't planted, it just started growing, probably because we dumped a bunch of
overripe or damaged pumpkins there last fall. So far we've harvested 4 ripe pumpkins from this plant.

I've been growing vegetables on manure piles for more years than this blog -- or this farm -- has existed.  I wrote about the 2008 manure pile/garden at the boarding barn HERE.  Here's a photo of it:

This garden was planted on a manure pile about 4 feet deep. 
I never watered it--the organic matter retained enough moisture to feed the plants all summer.

For lytha (and for other friends), I wrote it all down so you know how it works.

To Grow Zucchini (and other squashes) You Will Need:

*  Dirt
*  Sun
*  Water

Lytha says that she doesn't have "compost."  I disagree.  She does have compost, because she has this:

>>waving:  Hi pony! <<

Horses produce manure, and manure makes dirt. It really is that simple.

Do not go all squicky on me here.

Horse manure is basically grass, spit, and a few enzymes.
With time and water, manure becomes dirt.

Here's that first picture again:

See the stuff on the bottom edge of the photo?  That's manure from Fee's stall, and it's about a month old.
The pumpkin plant started growing in manure that was about 3 months old at the time.

Here's another picture.

6 months ago, this soil was manure straight from Fee's stall.
It is now a garden bed ready for planting garlic this weekend.

When we moved to Haiku Farm in 2009, we seriously had no dirt. We had gravel and weeds.  I couldn't push a shovel into the ground more than a half-inch, because that's where I hit rocks.

I fenced off a section of the yard, named it "GARDEN" and started adding stall cleanings.  Every winter, I add more--about 2-3 months worth of stall cleanings per section of garden.  Ten years later, the soil is more than 2 feet deep.



Designate a sunny space and name it "GARDEN."  

lytha says she doesn't have any "full sun" locations, but here is one:  it's in the pasture,
conveniently close to the manure production facility!

This chunk of Mag's pasture might not be a "garden" yet.  But you can certainly make it into one!  Start dumping all your manure, used shavings, and (if you have any) dried tree leaves onto the spot.  Dump it ALL there for a few months.

Put up a fence to keep horse and donkey from tromping on it.   If you have weed-barrier cloth (that allows water to permeate), throw that on.  (I almost never do that, but it speeds the process).

You want to give that stuff time to compost, so stop dumping at the end of December.


There:  it's a garden.

PRO TIP:  Dig out the grass before dumping the manure on.

If you can dump 3 or more FEET of manure on the spot, you'll kill the grass underneath.  Otherwise, dig up that grass because it will poke through your garden and generally become a PITA.  Patty's garden at Fish Creek Farm is about 6 feet tall--no exaggeration--because it's the manure from 20 horses collected over 3 months, and it gets dumped onto the spot we named "GARDEN" by the bulldozer.

If you aren't working with that much material, dig out the grass, then dump the manure on the spot with a wheelbarrow.

Start looking at seed catalogs and dreaming of squashes.

picture stolen from internet

Now, we wait.

Here in my Swamp, it will rain all winter if we're lucky.  For lytha in Germany, there's another kind of precipitation:

Water for the garden, photo stolen from lytha's blog.

All that rain and sn*w will compost the manure.  It might still be "ball-shaped" in early spring, but I promise:  by May it will be balls of dirt.

On June 1, it's time to plant.

If the soil is warm (70*F is the magic number, but if you put your hand on the dirt and it feels warm, it's time) before June 1, go ahead and stick seeds in.  I generally outline a garden bed by digging a trench around it, throwing the soil dug out on top of the garden bed to make it a little taller--look at the photo of the garlic bed as an example.  The trench gives me someplace to walk that isn't on top of vegetable seeds or young plants.

You can "double dig" the dirt inside the bed to break up the clumps and dirt balls if you want...or not.  Double-digging seems to encourage early germination of both vegetable seeds and weed seeds, and doesn't seem to change the amount of food harvested one way or the other.

Then, stand back.

If you don't get rain, add water.  Squashes (especially pumpkins) are heavy feeders, so they will need lots of nutrients from the soil (which you provide with all those loads of stall cleanings!) and a lot of water.

It's time to add water when you stick your finger into the dirt about an inch and the soil feels warm.  If it feels cool to the touch, it's still got moisture.

Pull weeds while you can still see soil between the plants.  After about 2-3 months, the leaves of the squash plant will shade out all the weeds.

Give it room.  

This happens every year

Unless you specifically choose a "bush" variety of pumpkin or zucchini, it will need room to run.  Squash vines are what gardeners call vigorous.  That's one of the joys--and exasperations--of squashes.

They can be a little hard on fences.

More waiting, more watering.  Then, the harvest.

I generally start harvesting zucchinis in July.  Pick them early and often!  There will always be a stealth zuke or two that lurks under leaves and then surprises you when it demands voting rights and a private parking spot.

There is a reason we call it "zucchini bombing"

Give zucchini to friends until you run out of friends.  Then start looking for unlocked cars in church parking lots, and leave them there.

Zucchini doesn't store well, so eat it fresh or shred it and freeze the shreds for later use in zucchini bread or soup.

The bomb bay of the Honda

If you plant winter squashes (with a hard rind), you can harvest some early for soup, or leave them all on the vine until just before First Frost.  

Get them off the ground before real cold hits, or you will have buckets of chicken food instead of proper squashes.

Monica built storage shelves out of old floorboards from the horse trailer

Store winter squash in a cool-ish dry place.  We rinsed ours with a mild bleach water solution before stacking them on shelves.  Last year's butternut crop fed us until the following May.

We may be eating this year's spaghetti squashes well into the 22nd century.

Questions?  Comments?  You know where to put them (in the box below, of course!)