Baby Squash vs. Courgettes & Horrible Marrows - a stratagem

[Vinlander]

I may have mentioned this before, but at my place tzatziki on battered fritters of baby squash or baby pumpkins are (massively) preferred to the relatively tasteless courgette version - no matter how fresh, no matter what landrace/variety. In fact courgettes are worse for any and every purpose (except possibly disappearing into the background of a dish quickly). I do the same with aubergines, and they are always good - but only baby squash/pumpkins come close to that intensity of flavour.

I'd already decided to grow only one or two courgette plants this year - ideally I'd grow less - but the young ones are slightly nutty they are 2 or 3 weeks earlier.

They are even earlier in a polytunnel, but sadly, genuine self-fertile varieties are getting so hard to find that I seldom bother these days (and when I do I bury them in 10L pots so I can move them outside ASAP for a better crop (ie. re-bury or transplant).

However, this year I used my own saved seeds - and you've guessed it - they all came up as squash crosses...

So - OK - I get more babies and better tasting fritters.

But there's an extra angle now - I came back from holiday 3 or 4 weeks ago, (I've been too busy to post until now) and I was delighted to see that (for once) I didn't  have any huge, seedy, horribly tasteless, armour-plated marrows to blunt my axe on their way to the compost bin.

It's obvious now (I can be slow on the uptake).

While you're away the baby squash turn into delicious adolescent squash  - absolutely no waste at all this year. The longer you're away the bigger the squash & pumpkins get - they just get on with it - it's all good.

I'd recommend sowing some squash late, so they're making babies during your summer holiday - but I haven't tested it yet - and no Indian summer might mean no babies anyway.

The moral of this story is that 2 courgette plants and 6-10 squash (depending on their final size) is a win-win, and 10 squash and no courgettes is almost as good!

Cheers.

[Vinlander]

[Vetivert]

Out of curiousity what are you classifying as squash or baby pumpkins? Something like a Yellow Crookneck, or baby Kuri squash, or both or neither? The terms are so interchangable depending on the person that I'm never quite sure what people are referring to unless the list the species!

[Vinlander]

Courgettes are just immature marrows - I'm talking about immature squash & pumpkins (irrespective of what size they would be at maturity).

I'm sorry - I should have avoided the term "baby"; "baby vegetables" are something else entirely - they can be genetically miniature - or (completely differently) stuff like  "baby carrots" - that have just been pulled early (the term "immature carrots" is largely meaningless - I'd say a mature carrot is one that is about to go to seed, or has already bolted).

Thinking about it - the courgette seems to have roughly the same net amount of flavour in it as the whole giant marrow it can become. What's tasty in a courgette (never very tasty) becomes a very, very bland (but enormous) marrow. I can see now why marrows can contribute flavour to a soup - but only if the whole damned thing is in there - the only thing marrows can beat for flavour is the water you'd need if you didn't use the marrow.

So what I'm saying, is the flavour of an immature squash or pumpkin offers you (nearly) all the flavour you would get in a mature fruit - so by growing immature ones you seem to be tricking the plant into producing more flavour than it would if you grow the normal small number of normal mature fruit. 

Try it next year - to get a kilo you may need a bit more space than you need to grow a kilo of courgettes, but you harvest 5-10 times more flavour per metre square.

And, as I said earlier, if you go in holiday you come back to delicious squash, not watery marrows.

Cheers.

PS. When we talk about delicious things we are usually being impressed by their intensity of flavour... The chocolate coins I used to be given at Xmas were rubbish - just fat and cocoa - nowhere near as good as the chocolate bars I could buy (and UK chocolate was, and still is worse than what I got abroad - only US chocolate is worse).

[Paulh]

I recognise that you are being provocative to a degree and it all comes down to the individual likes and dislikes of each of us, but here are some counterarguments!

Marrows are not just overgrown courgettes, nor courgettes immature marrows. They have been selected over many years for different attributes (like chard and beetroot). The seed companies sell them as separate categories, though you can find an occasional variety which is described as suitable as both (but I have never grown these).

A marrow has a tough skin and will store for a few weeks while a courgette grown to maturity retains a softer skin and stores less well.

Personally, I find marrows have a better taste than mature courgettes, and courgettes taste much better than immature marrows.

Some things picked as immature have less taste in my view - particularly runner / French beans which don't yet have the "bean" flavour - while others have more (often sweeter) - peas, carrots.

On going on holiday, it's certainly a good idea to pick things hard. This year I adopted a more comprehensive strategy as we went away for a three week "project" holiday in August / September and had as a complicating planning factor a long week away in May, too. I grew fewer courgettes and summer squash than usual (we like the wider range of varieties but give a lot away) and more winter squash. Peas / mangetout finished in July. I grew no beans other than borlotti beans which we ate as green beans before going away (definitely less tasty than other varieties!) and have as shelling beans as usual since our return.

I grow brassicas, courgettes etc and sweetcorn through corn starch mulching sheet which keeps down weeds and retains moisture - indeed, it's pretty well water-impervious. So these crops don't get watered after spot watering in the first couple of weeks anyway. They all grew away fine and survived our absence, though the courgettes were finishing by our return. I also used the mulching sheet for winter squash this year which was slightly less successful but due to the plants being smaller than I would like when planted and the weather hot then (plus squirrels pulling them up!).

So I didn't need anything to be watered while away and nothing to be picked other than courgettes which another plotholder was pleased to do!

[historygardening]

guinness book also  has separate categories for giant marrow and
giant courgette/zucchinis. the shape at maturity is also different for marrows
and courgettes

[historygardening]

A courgette grown by Bernard Lavery of Llanharry, Rhondda Cynon Taff, UK in 1990 weighed in at 29.25 kg (64 lb 8 oz).
https://www.guinnessworldrecords.com/world-records/heaviest-zucchini-courgette

The heaviest marrow (Cucurbita pepo) weighed 116.4 kg (256 lb 9.8 oz) and was grown by Vincent Sjodin (UK) for entry in the CANNA UK National Giant Vegetables Championships, held at the Three Counties
https://www.guinnessworldrecords.com/world-records/heaviest-marrow

[Paulh]

I'm expecting that those would have been inedible!