Thursday, August 18, 2011

Zucchini Overload

If there is one thing our family does, and does well, it's growing zucchini.  My hubby is the farmer of the family, and every spring plants a large vegetable garden in our backyard.  There is always one hill of zucchini included in the veggie selection.  As everyone knows, zucchinis seem to multiply like rabbits.  By August we usually have more of these lovely green squashes than our family can ever eat.  Over the years we've established a reputation as the neighborhood zucchini provider.


Roger's gigantic zucchini plants

However, 2011 was a record-setting year for our zucchini crop. The spring was notoriously cool and wet.  Roger planted the garden later than usual, and then jetted off to China the first two weeks of May.  When he returned from his trip, most of the veggies were breaking through the soil, but not the zucchini.  It appeared the seeds had failed to germinate.  So Roger dug another hole, and buried more zucchini seeds.


Double-decker squash

Fast forward a couple of weeks into the month of June.  After one of the few sunny days we had that month Roger noticed something scary was happening in the garden.  BOTH zucchini hills had germinated, and were sprouting lots of plants.  And very large plants at that.  Uh-oh.......


Zucchini plants do produce nice flowers

In late July, when the sun finally decided to shine for more than two consecutive days, Roger began to notice tons of tiny green squashes emerging from the zucchini vines.  The sunshine acted like miracle grow for those little guys.  They seemed to get bigger by the minute.  Roger would notice a zucchini that was the right size for eating one day, and return to the garden the very next day to find it had mushroomed into a monster!


And that's not all of it!

This week we found the motherlode of zucchinis residing in our little garden.  Hidden under the plant's leaves, Roger discovered mass quantities of zukes.  There was so many, they were stacking up on top of each other!   Roger picked half a dozen honkin' big squash.  I got out my zucchini bread recipes and prepared to bake.  Roger took a few of the big mothers to work, hoping to pawn them off on unsuspecting co-workers.



What am I gonna do with it all???
 
So what does one do with an overabundance of zucchini?  I can only bake so many loaves of bread. We gotta do something quick before the zucchinis take over our yard!  I may resort to anonymously leaving them on my neighbor's doorsteps at night. 

For the love of god, help us please!!

:)

3 comments:

  1. We had the same problem when we went on a trip in late summer and came back to find GIANT, inedible zucchini squash on the vine. We let them get as big as we could and then, at Halloween, we hollowed out the bulgy bit at the bottom and carved faces on them, like a jack-o-lantern. The tall, skinny faces looked awesome with the round orange faces.

    Or, I'll take some! :)

    ReplyDelete

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