Wow! The Red Arrows!

This was one of the questions I came up with when my local hort soc asked me to arrange a quiz for our annual Christmas Party a few years ago. No-one got the answer which was 'courgettes'. Cor! Jets! Geddit? They never asked me to do another, although I seem to remember everyone got 'Burnt Roger Federer perhaps?' Any guesses for that one anybody?


Anyways, this leads me on in a roundabout sort of fashion to courgettes and marrows in general. I have 7 courgette plants growing this season in order to give me a goodly selection of 6" long fruits come Westminster Show amongst others, a class I fully intend to win along with radishes. As anyone will know when you grow courgettes you are rewarded with so many fruits that you cannot give them away. We are currently having courgettes with every meal although the courgettes and weetabix took a bit of getting down. Our grandson Oscar is having many, many courgettes indeed mashed into his food which is making his poo very green. That's if we can actually get it into his gob rather than over his face and body! He's due to have a 6 hour op to install cochlear implants any time soon. Then he'll be able to hear the rubbish his grandad talks incessantly.

I mentioned a few weeks ago that I grow my courgettes against a stout post and train the plant up as soon as the growing point starts to 'go'. Rather than unruly, scrambly plants sprawling over the ground they end up very tidy and almost standard grown. The lower leaves usually succumb to mildew so these are cut off and I can plant other crops below them....crops such as even more radishes or kohl rabi. The plants are still quite low but are now starting to elongate meaning I can tie them every couple of inches to encourage them upwards. By the end of the summer the fruits can be harvested at just above testicle height.

The variety i've decided to grow this season is Cora which has already given me some very uniform and straight fruits. When cutting them, cut as much stalk as you can and take a sliver off this at the show with a sharp knife so it 'bleeds' sap and looks nice and fresh. You can start cutting two or three days before your show. Also retain the flower and stage them side by side to highlight uniformity, although you may find those harvested a few days before will obviously lose freshness in the actual flower.

For the past few years I've not been able to grow any decent marrows, due to illness in 2009 (I nearly died from swine man-flu you know!) and bad seed in 2010. This year is going to be different. Yesterday I planted out 3 plants on a goodly dollop of wet horse muck against a stout post. The plant will be trained up the post for a couple of feet and then along horizontal ones so that the fruits hang down much as I'm doing with cucumbers. Like cu's, marrows have very coarse foliage and you cannot allow them to scratch the skins of the developing marrows when they're small. If you do then a small scratch will be like a huge scar by the time the marrow is at full size. Growing in this way also allows light all round and means you do not get the yellowy or discoloured side that you would get if you grew them along the ground. Marrows for exhibition should be between 12 and 15" and are usually called for as a pair. Most plants will only give you 3 or 4 decent fruits if you're lucky so I will be planting another 3 plants in the next few days.

These are my marrows from Malvern in 2009 which came just out of the tickets!