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my grandparents have to lock their car doors when they go to sunday mass because people have been breaking in to unlocked cars and leaving entire piles of zucchini

i feel like i should’ve added more context when i posted this. my grandparents live in a rural area where farmers and casual gardeners alike are, at this point in the year, suddenly being hit with unexpectedly abundant zucchini crops. there aren’t just some random vandals leaving zucchinis in people’s cars for the hell of it, this is the work of some very exasperated, probably very elderly, folks who have more zucchini than they know what to do with

Yep. You can also expect to find a bag of zucchini on your porch.

My grandfather once found his neighbor stealing his tomatoes out of his garden at three in the morning. Red-handed, with a basket of the nearly-ripened ones.  He thought he was going to find gophers or something, but no, here’s Henry, taking his tomatoes. The best ones.

There was a long pause between them.

My grandfather (allegedly) said, “Henry… it’s OK.  You can take some tomatoes if you want them.”

Henry sighed in relief.

“But,” my grandfather said, “you have to take two zucchini for every tomato.”

There was another long silence.  “That’s a harsh bargain, John,” said Henry.  “But I accept.  I’ll tell Joe up the street, too.”

My grandfather said, “Tell Joe he needs to take three.”

a friend of my dad’s came by in the middle of the night, he seemed very nervous when my dad answered the door. he wouldn’t come inside but he leaned in and whispered to my dad in spanish, “i have some fresh grapes for you.” and then this happened:

the melon was a special bonus.

MY DREAM

A friend of mine lives in a rural area and he has been surrounded by zucchini for most of May, June, and July.

At one point he was so done with the whole zucchini madness that he came to classes actively begging people to “Please please please!! Take some my family’s damned zucchini!! I’ve been eating zucchini for weeks!! I’m going insane!!!”

Having grown up in a rural area and having come home to zucchini on the front step or in the mailbox, i find it highly amusing the OP had to clarify.  I’m sitting here nodding “yup.”

I have a friend with a garden in Oregon who literally made Zucchini Chocolate Chip Cookies and sent them to me in Indiana. I texted her back “I SEE WHAT YOU’RE DOING HERE”

I’m waiting for the day when someone will hear about my background in Botany and ask me for advice on what someone who’s just wanting to start exploring planting vegetables should try.

I know fuckall about gardening because my background is wild plants and not agriculture, but I’m gonna tell them

“Zucchini. Definitely try Zucchini. Just plant plenty of them and you’ll get a decent sized crop! They’re very rewarding to grow.”

It may be a bit of a long game, but I’ll enjoy their screams of despair from across the void as they realize that they will eat zucchini forever

This is NOT an exaggeration, guys. Zucchini (and most squashes, really) will outgrow you so fast. Let our tale be a caution– or an encouragement, whichever. You decide as you hear the story of Squish.

When we were so broke we had to choose between gas and store-bought-food (I think I was about 10?), we had a garden so we could eat regularly (we also had chickens and pigs and hunted, but that’s beside this point). One summer, we planted 6 rows of yellow squash and 6 rows of zucchini. Each row probably had 10, maybe 12 plants in it. We created this giant squash-block in our garden plot so it was all right there together in the middle, and the needier plants like tomatoes were on the outside of the whole plot. We thought we were clever, til the first crop started coming in.

The outside two rows of each squash, yellow and zucchini, were normal. High yield, of course (because squash), but standard size for both summer squash and Italian zucchini. The inner 8 rows, however, created this hybrid monstrosity that we called Squish. It was pretty– a nice swirly yellow and green combination that made it clear the squash and zucchini had interbred.

Squish became a living nightmare for us. Something about the hybridization caused them to forget how to stop growing, or at least how to grow at a normal rate because those suckers were longer than my dad’s forearm, and bigger around than my (albeit child-sized) thighs. They didn’t get all hard and nasty on the inside, either, for some reason, like most squash will at that size. And they just kept coming. I don’t even remember seeing that many flowers, but every day we were pulling upwards of 20lbs of Squish out of the garden, only for there to be more the next day, or sometimes by the end of the day if we harvested in the morning. I don’t know where they were hiding, but it was like some sort of squash portal had opened into our yard and started crapping out Frankenstein’s Squashes.

At first, it was great. We could eat all we wanted and not worry about rationing it. But the growing season in Arkansas is long, and we had incredible weather that summer, so those darn things kept alternating flowers and fruit. Pull off a few Squish, new flowers budded out, and they ripened super-fast in the heat. We were absolutely swimming in Squish, because they were so big that even gorging on them meant only 1 or 2 got eaten per meal. (I think I recall using a few particularly enormous ones as swords for a duel with my sister, if that says anything about their size. I cannot overemphasize how absolutely, heinously gigantic they were. You probably don’t believe me but I am not kidding. Those things were bigger than a newborn by several many inches and a couple pounds.)

We had (luckily) a big deep freezer, and someone gifted us a bunch of freezer ziploc bags, so we started chopping them up and freezing them as we pulled them off. We ran out of bags real fast, so we caved and bought a ton more. We filled that deep freezer near to bursting. It was probably 3-4 feet deep, (as I remember barely coming up to the edge of it), and at least 4-5 feet long, about 2.5 feet across, and we filled it to the top with Squish. And that’s while we’re eating fresh ones every day with dinner! But still more Squish came before the first frost, so we started packing the fridge. And my grandma’s freezer. And my grandma’s fridge. And feeding them to the pigs and chickens. And giving them away at church.

Do you realize how big a deal it is that people who were so broke that they had to choose between gas and the power bill were GIVING AWAY FOOD??? That’s how much gosh darn Squish we had. And little did I know, but apparently, my dad HATES squash. He only planted them because they were a cheap, quick source of food and my mom loved squashes. And he got stuck with the folly of his decisions. For over a year.

Yep. We had Squish in the freezer for over a year. Eating it regularly. It lasted for over a year. A family of 5, plus often feeding my grandmother, we ate off a single garden’s haul for over a year. Of just the Squish. I tell you, if we’d had a farmer’s market back then, that Squish could probably have single-handedly lifted us out of poverty. Well, maybe not, but you get the idea.

We never planted both again, probably because my dad would have combusted out of rage if he’d ever seen another Squish in his life. But man those were the days for thems of us what loved squash.

So survival tip: If you need an absolute crapton of food, plant you a row of yellow squash and a row of zucchini, and keep that pattern going for as many rows as you like. You too can drown in Squish and love it.

Oh wow.

The last story is well worth the read. It might be long but I found it absolutely delightful! Thank you for sharing your childhood Squish gardening adventures!

Meanwhile, people are starving to death.

Ands What do you expect poor rural farmers who just have excess zucchini to do about that exactly? Mail them to Africa?

I was just talking to a friend today about gardening and she said “I’ll plant zucchini for this project.”

“Oh dear… what’s your damage control plan?”

“Oh,” she said, intuiting what I meant. “Eating the blossoms. Love stuffed blossoms. Pumpkin, squash, zucchini. It keeps the crop down, and you get lots of mileage out of them. You keep a mixed crop that way, too. Plus, people don’t always welcome gifts of zucchini, but they find gifts of blossoms exciting.”

This struck me as absolutely game-changing.

We occasionally got left a box of zucchinis longer and thicker than my arm by a neighbour when we lived in the country. So we made relish. This recipe is amazing. Hot, sweet and sour, and with a beautiful balance of spices.

Sweet Courgette Relish from The Preserving Book

Makes approx 1.5kg (3lb 3oz) (2 medium preserving jars)

Takes 1 hour 25 minutes

Keeps 6 months

Ingredients

900g (2lb) courgettes, finely chopped by hand or food processor

1 large onion, very finely chopped by hand or food processor

500ml (16fl oz) cider vinegar

350g (12oz) granulated sugar

2 tsp English mustard powder

1 tsp tumeric

1-2 tsp chilli flakes

2 tsp cornflour

2 tsp coriander seeds

Method

1. Put the courgettes and onion in a preserving pan or a large heavy-based, stainless steel saucepan. Pour over the cider vinegar and stir to mix.

2. Add the sugar, mustard powder, turmeric, chilli flakes, cornflour, and coriander seeds, and stir over a gentle heat until the sugar has dissolved. Bring to the boil, reduce the heat, and cook, stirring occasionally, for 40 minutes-1 hour or until the mixture has thickened. The relish is ready when it is the consistency of burger relish. (Dragging the spoon across the base of the pot reveals a clean pan.)

3. Ladle into warm sterilized jars with non-metallic or vinegar-proof lids, seal, and label. Store in a cool, dark place. Allow the flavours to mature for 1 month, and refrigerate after opening.

My Notes

Out of the relishes and chutneys I’ve made, this is my absolute favourite. It’s easy to scale it up if you’ve got a greater volume of zucchini, so long as your pot is big enough, and people love this relish as a gift. I’ve found it keeps fine for longer than six months, so long as your jar is sterile, something easily achieved by filling your jars while the mix is piping hot and inverting the jars to sterilise the lid. Also, though it says to mature it (and it will be better if you do) it is perfectly edible and delicious when it is first made. That’s great if you’ve got an uneven amount of product and there’s a half-jar that needs eating. Goes beautifully with burgers but also on sandwiches, in cheese toasties, on baked potatoes, and by the spoonful if you’ve got a craving for it.