Harvest time

One of the first crops I tried when I bought my house was courgette. It seems to be easy to grow them. And I suppose it in the end turned out to be quite easy to grow the plants, and these plants will indeed produce fruit. But I didn't end up eating a single courgette that year; the slugs got them all.

I have since kept some courgette plants in the conservatory. That way the slugs don't get them! But your enemy then is overheating and drying out. The conservatory gets really hot in summer, and you have to water the plants several times a day. If you're not there for the day they look miserable, and if you are away for more than a day you really have to move them outside. But as soon as you do, the slugs get to the courgettes.

This year I had given up on indoor growing of pumpkin (which I had tried last year), because the pumpkin plant gets very big and the slugs don't actually eat the pumpkins. And I had given up on butternut squash (which I had also tried last year) altogether, given that the slugs do eat those, but the plant gets unmanageably big indoors. And with these two big plants out of the way, I had enough space in the conservatory for four courgette plants.

When I went to the Netherlands in early June I just took them out of the conservatory but kept them indoors. It did the job! They survived this. And since then I have not been away much. So they have been thriving! And at the time of writing, I have already produced three full sized courgettes. Two have already been harvested and turned into courgette soup. The third, and in all likelihood not the last, will soon be turned into dinner of some sort.

Not bad if I can say so myself!

I wish now I had taken a picture of my lovely courgette soup. I didn't! Maybe I'll remember taking a picture of whatever it is I do with courgettes next. But it is very satisfying to eat a meal largely out of one's own garden!