Zucchini are a staple of my summer garden. They will give you more food per plant than almost anything else you grow, and they will take over a bed if you let them. I have grown them since childhood veggie patches, through the five acres at Oak and Monkey Puzzle, and now in the wicking beds here at Little Cottage on a Hill in Daylesford, where last summer they were a big part of a hundred kilos of food in fifty days. This is what I have learnt about growing them well in a small space, and about the one problem almost everyone writes to me about.
One note before the method. Everything here is what I do, in my garden, on volcanic soil in the Central Victorian Highlands. My usual cutoff for planting anything frost-tender is Melbourne Cup weekend, though this season is running warm and I have planted some out early on the strength of watching the garden closely. Your date will be different. Observe your own garden before you follow mine.
Why zucchini
I have grown zucchini for as long as I have grown anything. Childhood veggie patches, then the five acres at Oak and Monkey Puzzle in Spargo Creek, and now here. They are the plant I point people to when they want to grow one thing and don't know where to start. A zucchini in a patch of borrowed dirt will feed you. It will also teach you more about how a plant works, and what it does when something is missing, than almost anything else in the garden.
Last January I came in from the wicking beds one morning with an armful of 'Nitro' and 'Goldy', green and yellow, grown from Lambley Nursery seed, and sat down and wrote the first version of this piece. That summer the wicking beds gave me over a hundred kilos of food in fifty days. Tomatoes, cucumbers, herbs, greens, and a great many zucchini. A good portion of that came off plants I had trained to grow up rather than out, which is the part most people don't expect.
1. Prepare the soil, and wait for warmth
Zucchini are heavy feeders. Give them a sunny spot and rich, free-draining soil, with plenty of compost and aged manure worked in before planting. The soil has to be warm; pushed into cold ground they sit and sulk and the slugs find them first. In my cool temperate climate the planting window runs from late spring through to January. If you are growing them traditionally, allow about a metre per plant.
In crop rotation, zucchini sit with the fruiting crops alongside tomato, capsicum, eggplant and cucumber. They follow the leafy greens in the bed sequence, and the cucurbit family stays out of the same bed for three to four years.
2. Save space by growing them up
One of the most useful things I have learnt is to grow zucchini as a single stem up a stake. Put a sturdy bamboo or hardwood stake in at planting, before the roots spread, and tie the stem in loosely with soft elastic ties every twenty or thirty centimetres as it climbs. The ribbed Italian types such as 'Costata Romanesco' suit this best, though bush varieties will do it with more tying in.
The footprint drops to a fraction of what it was. The airflow around the leaves improves, which matters enormously for powdery mildew in a warm, humid summer. And the fruit stops hiding under the leaves. Later in the season you can remove the lower leaves once the fruit below them is picked, which opens the base of the plant to air and light.
In the wicking beds I plant at the edge so the plant can go up a frame or trail down over the timber cladding. The outside face of a raised bed is growing space most gardens never use.
3. Harvest regularly for continuous yields
Zucchini are best picked small, fifteen to twenty centimetres, when the skin is still glossy. Regular picking keeps the plant flowering and fruiting. Leave a fruit on too long and the plant decides its work is done and puts everything into one marrow. In peak season I check the plants every second day. It is incredible how fast they move.
4. Water wisely
Consistent, deep watering is the key. Water at the base of the plant, early in the morning, and keep the leaves dry, because wet leaves make mildew worse. Mulch around the base to hold moisture in and keep weeds down. Shallow daily watering keeps roots at the surface, which is exactly where you don't want them in February.
In a wicking bed the reservoir does this for you. The soil stays evenly moist from below, the leaves never get wet, and the plant never goes through the wet-dry-wet cycle that stresses it into dropping fruit. For a heavy feeder, keep a gap of fifty to seventy-five millimetres between mulch and stem, and top up with compost through the season.
5. Address pollination problems
If small zucchini are yellowing and shrivelling from the tip before they mature, the cause is almost always poor pollination, not disease and not your soil. Zucchini carry separate male and female flowers. The male sits on a long, thin, straight stem. The female has a tiny fruit already formed at its base. If pollen does not make it from one to the other, the plant lets the fruit go.
Early in the season the plant often produces only male flowers for a week or two. That is normal. On cold mornings the bees are slow, so the window can pass without a visit. If you are not seeing bees, hand pollinate. Early in the morning, pick a male flower, peel back the petals, and brush the pollen gently onto the centre of a female flower. One male will do two or three females. It takes a minute and it makes all the difference to your harvest.
If the problem is a sunken, leathery, dark patch at the blossom end of a bigger fruit, that is blossom end rot, which comes from uneven watering. A different problem, with a different fix, and one the wicking bed largely solves.
What's your experience with growing zucchini?
Zucchini are a reminder of why I garden in the first place, fresh seasonal food straight from the soil and into the pan. The full piece, with more of the story, the wicking bed set-up, what I do in a heat spike and how to save seed that comes true, is on Substack.
Read the full piece on Substack: Here
Wicking Bed Garden workshop, Sunday 1 November, Little Cottage on a Hill, Daylesford. [Book here.]
The Wicking Bed Garden e-book, the design and the build, step by step. [It's here.]
The Productive Garden Companion, which includes the wicking bed guide. [Australia] | [Everywhere else]
Newsletter, for first word on new dates. [Subscribe]
Natasha xx
Continue your gardening journey with me
If this way of working with the seasons speaks to how you are thinking about your own garden, my workshops and book share the fuller version of it, with more detail and guidance on garden design, productive growing, soil care and seasonal practice.
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You may want to check out my related content below:
October Garden Tasks for All Climates
Hydrangea Paniculata: A Year-Round Beauty in the Garden
The Root: Shoot Ratio – Why Bigger Isn’t Always Better
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Natasha xx
