I thought my zuchini were done for the season and hadn't check my vines till yesterday and found a four pounder on the vine. Being a rookie, I've been told they get bitter when they get too big. It has good dark green color. Any Thought out there?
Time to make some bread.
On Sun, 29 Aug 2004 19:32:01 -0500 in , "two dogs" graced the world with this thought:
The problem I've had with them is that they get pithy when they get big... however, if you do a zuke casserole, pithy doesn't matter much. However, you may want to taste it first to see if it bitter.
Of course, there's a limit to just how pithy it is before it's the consistency of bark. Try one and see.
Now, as for bitterness... I'm curious if anyone knows, can Magnesium solve this for a lot of veggies on older plants? Not after formation, but fruit formation on a late-season plant. I've used epsom salts on cucumbers, especially lemon cukes, and it works fine. Does this go for other veggies known to get bitter?
If you have a dehydrator, make dried zucchini chips (unflavored or flavored). I was away one week myself, the neighbors kept picking tomatoes and cucumbers, but no one of them likes zucchini, so I have four of those myself right now.
Or slice and dehydrate them as suggested last year. I tried it; they are good that way! (And I don't generally like zuchinni
Glenna
or zuchini soup, delicious stuff.
Ask someone for the cinnimon pickle recipe for cukes that are too big for anything else.
Dwayne
Stuff. There are about 10,000 recipes on the web.
I've had 2.5 pounders all season and no one complained about the quality. I kept asking and everyone agreed they were good. Four pounds is a bit bigger, but you'll only know if you taste. ANd as people suggest some recipes are forgiving. Grilled, chopped, stuffed zucchini, zuchiini pie.
I recently shredded about a 1/2+ pound, salted, it, left it to dry out and used it in meatloaf. I like a lot of veggies in my meatloaf. I mixed it in with diced peppers, finely chopped onion, garlic. I use a mixture of spices, vinegar, worcheshire and diced can tomatoes as a topping. DiGiTAL ViNYL (no email) Zone 6b/7, Westchester Co, NY,
How do you tell a zuchinni plant from a cucumber plant? Do you have to wait for the fruit to grow? It is a fruit, right? Not a vegetable?
Oooh, yummy, stuffed baked zucchini! Look for a recipe on recipes.com. Also my English neighbour always takes my giants for a relish she makes. Then you can grate them and make zucchini cake and zucchini bread, like carrot cake. also yummy. They make great filler in meat loaves and you can always just cut into sticks, batter and fry. And at our local Salt Spring Island Fall Fair, we put wheels on them and race them down the ramp in the "Zucchini
500"Denise
LOL literally! Sure would like to see some pictures of this. Does your festival have a web page?
No, it's a vegetable. Well, botanically speaking it is indeed a fruit (like many other foods we regard as vegetables). Speaking from a cooking and eating point of view, it is a vegetable.
If you're in the UK (or many other places), you call this vegetable 'courgettes'.
How do I tell it from a cucumber plant? The leaves look different. I cannot describe the difference to you, but I recognize when I see it. Zucchini plants are MUCH less apt to climb up something than are cucumber plants too.
HTH. Pat
You can tell at an early stage. The zuchinni is a much sturdier plant, with thick stems and leaves larger than an A4 sheet of paper, and flowers opening to about the size of man's fist. The cucumber is a more delicate plant, with leaves smaller than a cigarette packet and flowers no larger than the size of a man's thumbnail. The cuc is a spreading creeper, while most of the newer zuchinnis are clumping.
The cucumber plants I have, have leaves about 5" x 5". The flowers on it are about 1" to 1.25" in diameter. The first cucumber was very good. This plant is a Marketmore 76 and is doing quite well. A lot of cucumbers are trying to grow upon it, it's had about dozen fruits start, but only one cucumber made it through the summer. It's got three more young cucumbers starting on it and it looks like it likes the liquid fertilization I'm giving to it... a 1-2-1 type where I put a tablespoon into a 2-gallon container of water. It seems to love getting that a few times a week. It is growing up a chain link fence and the vine is about
6 or 7 feet in length currently. The hurricanes have taken a toll on it and it's lost most of it's lower leaves. It seems to definitely like a moist soil, ie watering at least two, but seeming to prefer three times a day.The size of the leaves contadicts what you've stated. I did plant a zuchini but it didn't make it through Hurricane Frances. The other cucumber plants I have, a extra long yamato (Ferry Morse) never fruited. I had two of those growing side by side, but neither fruited and one died.
The yamato were planted in well fertilized soil outdoors, while the Marketmore 76 were planted in sandy soil. I applied some slow release fertilization at the time of seeding.
The cucumbers seem to like sunlight as long as the temp isn't too hot.
The Marketmore 76 cucumbers start off growing with prickly nubbies on it and I wonder what's up with the nubbies. :-) They seem to rub off and I'm thinking along the lines that over time, only the nubbie cukes survived the insects (?).
Also, I noticed something likes to burrow into them when they reach ripeness. I need to find some more information about cukes and start reading up on them again.
Thanks, John for your comments. It's been awhile since I've posted this and didn't think anyone ever replied. I'll have to look over google for the replies.
Jim;
John is right on on the difference between a cucumber plant and a zucchini. Most zucchinis are stocky bushy plants with leaves at leat 4 times larger than a cuke. There are vining zukes but they are relatively rare most cultivars bush like other summer squash. Blossoms are also huge in comparison to cucumber and cantaloupe plants. Even a blind man would not confused the two when grown side by side. If you are in the southeast (texas to Georgia, fall plantings are very suceptible to pickle worms. The only control is more insecticide applications than I am willing to use.
Thanks FarmerDill.
I've posted some pics of the cucumber that came off the plant. The cuke was planted outside from a packet of Ferry Morse Marketmore 76 seeds.
The leaves are about 5 inches wide, 5 inches high... John Savage mentioned an A4 size paper. If that's the 11x17 I will be thrilled and I think I will plant some seeds tonight.
I did pull some out of a package at one time, but I don't think they ever germinated. If they did, they were the plants that never made it past 3 inches high. Oh I have some DM Ferry Poinsett seeds as well that have been opened. Could be that set of seeds as well.
The Zuke seeds I have are some from a Walmart American Seed (Squash Dark Green Zucchini) 10 cent package.
You guys got me excited about 20 inch leaves. If the Zuchs are not vines... what a shame... I got all excited about 17 inch leaves on a vine. Awhh shucks. 17 inch leaves though... awesome! I guess I'll have to space it away from some of the other stuff.
I'm in Tampa, FL. The soil is sandy for the most part. I've been throwing some of that Viagro fertilizing pellets around.
I'm thinking the Yamato Cucumbers didn't fruit because they are in the shade all day long, getting indirect sun. While the Marketmore 76 cukes are in the shade getting some direct sun, but not too much, as they are in the shade as well. They seem to like the watered down fertilizer I've been using.
Water seems to pass down through their soil/sand pretty easily so I threw a bunch of sphagnum peat on top, I'm not sure if that is the way to go.
Coffee grounds don't seem to be very helpful for Cucumbers. I'm wondering if I should be throwing some banana peals down there?
In May or June, we had some roses that were hit by Black Spot. All the leaves and branches were cut off because baking soda and vegetable oil didn't seem to help. It struggled to grow leaves, and I decided to stick some banana peels into the blender and put the peels into the area around the roots. That worked wonderfully! The bush grew plenty of leaves and roses in about a month.
So I'm wondering if the same thing might help with cucumbers. I want to take some of the burden of using that powdered fertilizer away. Any comments or suggestions regarding that will be greatly appreciated.
Jim. Your pictures are about right for cucumbers.
Poinsett will be visually indistinguisable from Market more 76. You may notice a difference in yields.
The soil in this part of Georgia is also sand and benefits greatly from any type of organic matter being incorporated. If you use spagnum however, you wil need to add dolomitic limestone to keep you soil pH up.
If I want to make the vine healthier, grow more cukes, is there something suggested in order to do this?
By the time it is bearing a zucchini will have broader leaves, yes, up to about 20 inches would be right.
They like good drainage, plenty of mulch, and regular watering.
Also, the bees can easily overlook the smaller flowers of cucumbers when there are bigger flowers around. You can try pollinating them by hand: pick the male flower, strip off all petals, and rub the stamens inside that day's newly opened female flowers.
Mildew is the bane of cucumbers and zucchinis. When you water don't wet their leaves. Poke the end of the hose into the soil near the plant and gently soak the soil that way. Avoid splashing the leaves. I believe the homemade remedy for mildew is baking soda and milk, not oil. Full cream milk at that. I haven't tried it myself.
I had in mind the apple cucumbers, but as you say the bigger varieties do have proportionately bigger leaves.
A good thing about growing zucchinis is that you don't need the bees. If you pick the fruit when the flower is fully open then you can eat both fruit and flower (fry the flower in batter). Otherwise, pick the fruit as soon as the flower is spent.
HomeOwnersHub website is not affiliated with any of the manufacturers or service providers discussed here. All logos and trade names are the property of their respective owners.