Zucchini Growing Tips I Wish I’d Known | Home Gardening: Ep. 5

hello lovely people nicole jolly here today i want to share with you zucchini tips and secrets that i wish i knew when i was first starting out gardening and the first one is spacing i'm just like you i want to cram in as much as i can into my garden especially when you have a small space you can do that with plenty of other vegetables but not with zucchini i have eight foot by four foot beds and i have not planted any zucchini side by side except for one so i have one here two three and a fourth alongside but that's only because it's a climbing variety that's a rampikante so as you can see i have a trellis that that zucchini is going to grow up and over why spacing is so important with zucchini is air flow the first thing that's going to take your zucchini out in the gardening season is powdery mildew and that will often kick in because there's not enough air moving through these leaves i transplanted these zucchini exactly three weeks ago i grew them indoors from seed they were about this big when i planted them here and boom look how big they grow these leaves look at this one they get enormous so they need a lot of space so that all the moisture from the morning dew or the rain doesn't get trapped up in these big leaves now let's talk about flowers zucchini have male and female flowers the male provides the pollen and the female is what turns into your zucchini so it grows the fruit you need both right you need the pollen to fertilize the female flowers now the way that you can tell them apart is that the males this is a male right here the male flowers have these really skinny stems leading up to a beautiful pointy flower the females have a more bulbous stem because that's the ovary that's where the zucchini is going to grow right the flour is going to sit atop the zucchini fruit which will be attached to the main plant now lots of zucchini plants will throw out male flowers before female flowers and that panics us gardeners right where are all my female flowers they're the ones that are going to produce the fruit but don't panic zucchini plants will often throw out male flowers first because they take less energy to produce so they're kind of like practice flowers if you will they will catch up they will send out female flowers when they're established and they feel like they can send energy to those flowers now they have to sink up right the male flowers have to open at the same time that female flowers open so that the pollen can be transferred and in the beginning that might be a little bit tricky too don't panic the plant will work it out i know some gardeners will take a paint brush and pick up some of the pollen off of the male flowers and manually deposit it onto the female i've never had to do that i trust my zucchini i think they're going to be okay and already you can see i've got two zucchini growing there i can see a baby one here this is early in the season they're already starting to produce certain zucchini varieties are actually grown for their flower production so in italy this variety which is called costata romanesco is a variety that's actually grown for flower production because they produce really large flowers and in italian cuisine they love to fry those squash blossoms maybe stuffed with some mozzarella i think i might do that this year but at this early stage in the season i don't want to sacrifice any flowers i just want to start eating the fruit now let's talk about pest management so you might find a lot of ants on your plants i don't want you to panic about that ants themselves are not going to do any damage but i always see them as a sign that there might be a more damaging pest present so if you see ants on your plants start looking around turn over the leaves see if there are any aphids around that's what they're looking for they're looking especially for aphids because aphids produce a sort of sticky sweet substance that they like to eat so ants will actually farm aphids they will let them live so that they produce that sticky substance that they like to consume so i will start turning over my plants looking for aphids but also and perhaps more damaging are squash beetles so you can find sort of pinkish orangy clusters of eggs and if you find them all you do is you take your thumb and you rub them right off spiders by the way are your friends think of them as your partners in pest control so if they're about they are going to be looking for the bugs that you don't want on your plants so let them be the other big enemy of the zucchini is the vine borer so what you want to do is start checking the stems that lead into the dirt these are borers that will literally get into and tunnel into the main trunk of your zucchini and start degrading its integrity so if you start to see any spongy brown spots then you can literally take a knife open up that area and scrape them out of there get them out of there because they will do more long-term damage than that cut will do i wish i could show you that now but luckily for me i don't have any at the moment but just keep a beady eye this early in the season they won't be a problem but as the season progresses they will more than likely show up there are zucchini varieties that are more resistant to those borers like my rem picante the one that is climbing up this trellis they have stronger woodier stems that make it harder for those borers to get into so if i have bad luck and some of these start to peter out hopefully my ram picante that will be climbing up and producing these long snake-like zucchini will carry on for me so when you plan your garden try to research some would your stemmed varieties that can keep your zucchini producing when some of the others might succumb to those vine borers later in the season i'll meet you back here at the zucchini patch so i can show you how to prune the leaves and keep your plants producing all season long in the meantime make sure you're clicking that notifications bell so you know when i'm back with more tips and tricks make sure you're subscribed consider joining our membership you know the drill thanks guys talk to you soon

Channel: TRUE FOOD TV

Views: 1,111,732

Keywords: zucchini, squash, squash beetle, powdery mildew, vine borer, zuchini, zucchini flowers, squash blossoms, home gardening, victory garden, grow your own food, urban farming, how to grow zucchini, harvest, nicole jolly, grow vegetables, rampicante, costata romanesco, nimba, garden planning, transplanting, grow from seed, courgette

Id: eFsSiaNpvJ4

Length: 6min 45sec (405 seconds)

Published: Mon Jun 15 2020