Zucchini Time Is Here Again!

It's always a thrill when the first zucchini blossom of the summer season opens for business! Adding to the thrill is the mysterious identity of this year's first bloom.

Some weeks back at Green String Farm I was looking over a long wooden table of seedlings: squash and melons with generic labels like "zucchini" or "cantaloupe." The young intern on duty couldn't tell me which variety of zucchini was being offered for sale. "I think it's one of the round kind, but I'm not sure," she said. "It could be one of the long kind."

Just starting your internship, eh? I thought to myself. No matter -- the timing was right, the garden space was available, I love trying a new type of plant, and we all need to support the next generation of idealistic farmers. I bought two sturdy seedlings and, on May 12, transplanted them into one of the cucurbit beds in the northwest corner of the garden.

On June 19 the first sunshine yellow crepe paper blossom unfurled at the end of its long thin stem -- a lone male flower, testing the summer air of this new season.

As yet unopened, the first mysterious female flower was a tight green bud with a baby zucchini, distinctively round, at its base. So, it's one of the round kind -- but which one? I decided to let it grow a bit before beginning my online research.

 

The neighboring bed with three plants of Emperor's Jade zucchini from Sweetwater Nursury via Whole Foods was also planted on May 12. Nothing was blooming yet but a baby zucchini was in evidence beneath a bud furled tight as a folded umbrella.

By the next morning, June 20, the mystery squash had opened its first female flower.

And the Emperor's golden flags were flying too, both male and female standards.

Male flowers on both varieties are quite similar in the formation of the anthers, the pollen bearing parts, but there are subtle differences in the convoluted surfaces of the female stigmas, which receive the pollen.

So far it's a good year for zucchini, unlike last summer's spider mite disaster, a most demoralizing episode. I had to buy zucchini for green soup, feeling very furtive about it. If you can't grow zucchini you might as well turn in your trowel.

I think we will be able to pass the zucchini test this year.

Data from the last several seasons shows a pretty consistent pattern of growth even though I planted different varieties each year: Seedlings set in the ground in early May start to bloom about a month later, more or less. Perhaps, all in all, it doesn't matter a lot whether it's the round kind or the long kind. Zucchini is zucchini is zucchini. But that won't stop me from tracking down the mystery squash, for the record.

Seedlings planted:

2009 May 10 (Green Racer)
2010 Not sure, but later than May 10 (Green Bush)
2011 May 8 (Cocozelle, Zephyr)
2012 May 12 (mystery squash, Emperor's Jade)

First blossom:

2009 June 8
2010 June 13
2011 June 12
2012 June 19 (mystery squash); June 20 (Emperor's Jade)

First Zucchini Blossom of 2011

Updated below, 6/27/2011

Ta-da! Somehow it's always a surprise to find the first zucchini blossom of the season flaring like a golden trumpet in the morning air.

This is a female flower waiting hopefully for pollination, and, indeed, there is a bee at lower left. The bee will get what it needs (nectar, if not pollen), but this first bloom of a Cocozelle seedling from Natural Gardening is all alone. Even hand pollination by a willing gardener won't work because no male flowers have opened yet and zucchini blossoms seem to last only a day. By tomorrow this proud beauty will be drooping, limp, and shriveled.

Nonetheless, the official trumpet blast has sounded (in my head) and summer has begun.







Here's a side view, with a baby zucchini ready to go. It won't grow much and won't be harvestable but it has played a role in announcing the season.


Combing through blog posts from previous years, I gathered some comparative data on zucchini plantings for the past three years:

Seedlings planted:

2009 May 10 (Green Racer)
2010 Not sure, but later than May 10 (Green Bush)
2011 May 8 (Cocozelle, Zephyr)

First blossom:

2009 June 8
2010 June 13
2011 June 12

First harvest:

2009 June 14
2010 June 21
2011 We'll see Update: 6/27/2011: First harvest occurred June 25

Empirical generalization: Get the seedlings in the ground by the second week of May, expect the first blossom by the second week of June and the first harvest by the third week of June.

The harvest can't come too soon for me because I'm down to about ten containers of this winter's green soup in the freezer. It's time for the summer version!

Lettuce Transition

This morning's harvest of lettuce marks a transition from the last fading remnants of our glorious spring salads -- the tall narrow speckled leaves of Forellenschluss -- and the first picking of summer greens -- the full ruffled leaves of Red Sails. Red Sails seedlings were planted out May 8, with an estimated Days to Maturity of six to seven weeks. Since the first Red Sails have reached harbor on June 6, less than a month later, the DTM most likely should be calculated from when the seeds went into the pots at Gaddis Nursery, not from when the seedlings went into the ground in our backyard.

Regardless of the details, it looks like we will not be suffering a Lettuce Gap and will not be having withdrawal symptoms due to salad deprivation.




There are still a few stalks of bolting Forellenschluss that can be gleaned for enough leaves to tide us over the next couple of weeks.




However, once all the stalks start forming buds it's all over but the seed saving.





Fortunately, there are new plantings coming along under a couple of shade houses made of old lace curtains draped over some re-purposed tomato supports.






In one shade house, The Red Sails is farthest progressed. The Salad Bowl seedlings from Sweetwater Nursery went into the ground on May 29 so it will be awhile before I can start plucking one or two tender leaves from each plant.





Eventually, if all goes well, there will also be some Raddicio to add to the salad mix. The seedlings from Sweetwater Nursery are still in their planter pots, waiting for some room to open up in one of the beds.






Already nestled into the second shade house are Endive seedlings, also from Sweetwater, planted on May 29.

When the plants fill out, we should have a really nice mix of sweet and tangy greens to keep us in our accustomed almost-daily salads through the warm months. This may seem like good planning but it's really just happenstance: I saw several plastic six packs of lettuce seedlings hidden in a corner of the display of summer plants at Whole Foods and bought them all.

We have gotten so used to eating our own lettuce that it seems worth the effort to find out if it can be a year-round experience.