Who Wants Some?!

Sometimes I think I might be the only one but I really like eating zucchini or summer squash or whatever you want to call it.  I even, believe it or not, purchase it at the grocery store throughout the year.  So of course there was no question it was going in our garden.  Previously, we planted it in the shady spot in the back yard and only got a few zucchini each week for a few weeks toward the end of summer.  I knew that this was not typical based on my experience with our garden when I was a child.  Although it has been almost twenty years since my mom planted a vegetable garden I recall that they grew faster than we could pick them and some ended up being huge.  They grow to be the size of a baby if you let them and as they get bigger they get less appealing to eat.  They don't taste as good and the seeds get large.  My sister and I would sell those monsters to my grandma and her neighbor for a quarter and they humored us, the kind ladies that they are. 

Everyone knows that zucchini produce unlike most other common garden vegetables.  Or is it actually a fruit?  I think the standard is that if you can see the seeds it is a fruit (such as pumpkins, tomatoes, etc.) and if not it is a vegetable (carrots, spinach, celery, etc.)  I don't know!  If you research how to grow it every article generally says that any fool can grow it because it doesn't need anything special besides water and sun.  We planted four plants this year and several people said something along the lines of "two would have been plenty!"  After our years of growing it in the shade and forgetting the nature of this plant I realized that they are probably right. 

 

This is from one week of picking.  There are also two in the crisper drawer and Justin gave away two to a co-worker.  And we ate one.  Oh, and we gave one to my mom.  Holy crap.  One week.  I have found a zucchini cake recipe that I will be trying this weekend.  That big monster on the left will be the first to be shredded into the batter.  I am thinking that it would be fun to do an experiment and let one stay on the vine to see how large it will grow.