Zucchini

I have continuous success growing zucchini for a couple years now. The blossoms are great for deep frying with cheese stuffed inside. If you are going to eat the blossoms, make sure that you pick the male flowers. The picture above shows a female flower with a zucchini on one end (upper flower) and a male flower with just a skinny stem on the end (lower flower).


The zucchini I grow are small. I think that's because I am not giving them enough room. I also get blossom end rot frequently. You can see a rotting zucchini in the picture above right underneath the male flower. If I catch those rotting zucchini early enough, I just cut the rotted ends off and eat them.

Blossom-end rot is caused by a lack of calcium in the developing fruit. So either the plant is not absorbing enough calcium from the soil or the soil doesn’t have enough calcium in it to start with. The solution is to get a PH soil test kit and test your soil. If it is lacking calcium, the solution would be to add calcium to your soil.

If the test shows the soil is okay, then you can increase nutrient uptake to the roots of the plant by mulching and adding compost/organic matter to your soil.