Allotments 4 All

Hi all, hope you're well

I am sick to the bloody back teeth of courgettes.  Planted 4 on lottie and picking about 10 per week.  Even the neighbours have started drawing the curtains and locking their doors when they see me SOOO I have decided to let the beggars grow. 

Now the problem is they are about 2 foot long but still green.  Should I wait until they go a different colour?  do they go a different colour? err bit stuck..and although this seems like a moan I am dead happy with the progress on my new lottie.  Thought i wouldn't be able to grow anything the state it was in but i was wrong...I am fantastic at growing courgettes lolhttp://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=35216&id=653222913

any advice on the marrow much appreciated x

When they are as big as you want say 18" to two foot cut them and leave them in a sunny place ideally a greenhouse to "cure" the skins. Romanesco does this very well, we kept a monster in the Kitchen until the end of January.. before OH decided to cook it..  :o

I have several self-seeded squash which look more like marrows. We've eaten a couple of them but they are so prolific - more so than all the other carefully sown and nurtured squash varieties - that I'm leaving the rest of them on the vines. Several are turning a lovely pumpkin colour, so maybe they are a cross variety and I intend leaving them till the vines die back. Hopefully, we'll have some to store for the winter months.

Tricia

Hi Flowergirl,

My neighbours are hiding too!   ;D   Like you, I've only got 4 plants, but they're producing courgettes faster than I can cope with.

Have a look on the Recipes4 All part of this site - there's one for courgette and spring onion soup - made it this morning, had it for lunch, and made another 6 pints (that's how many courgettes I've got!) tonight to freeze.

I used ordinary onions I'd grown on the plot, and it worked fine. 

They dont change colour, they just keep getting bigger...

I prefer to leave them on the plant until they sound hollow when rapped.

In passing, remember that many Courgettes will not store like Marrows. Hence the reason for growing both.

I thought marrows where courgettes  ???

Or vice versa??

Ah, but Courgettes are mostly bred to have tender, edible, skins, whereas Marrows need a leather one to store.

Quote from: flowergirl on August 17, 2008, 17:41:55
I thought marrows where courgettes  ???

Someone asked me that recently so I dug around a bit - what I found said that the marrow is the mature fruit, the courgette the immature.

True, they are identical but as Tim said, they have been selectively bred for different qualities.  Courgettes to eaten young so have thinner skins and marrows to left to mature so they have thicker skins.  It is only the same has having two different sorts of tomatoe e.g. Moneymaker, bred for yield and uniformity and sod the flavour, and all the ones we grow! ;D