Zucchini does not stop growing for anyone. While we’ve been busy seeding melons, cucumbers, cooking dirt, building tables in the greenhouse, plowing the garden, pulling up last years plastic mulch and laying down the mulch, the zucchini just keeps on growing. In Part One, we covered seeding. Now at two days, they are up and ready to be moved from the heat table to the lights to let them harden a bit.
Look at us grow!
At four days, we move them out of the house and down to the greenhouse. Just nine days later, look at how much they have grown.
Just 9 days old
Remay tunnel
Ken checking the plants
It is important to know how fast your plants grow so that you can keep track on a calendar when to plant. If you seed too late or too early, you can have little disasters later on. In this case, we want to be eating zucchini in May and have it producing by the end of May so that we will have a nice supply for market. You may pick your first zucchini at 6 weeks, but it takes another week and a half for the plant to actually be producing one small hand-width or octave-width zucchini a day. To get the picking size of the zucchini, spread your hand as wide as you can; that is the width of the eight keys of a piano octave. Half an inch shorter is the small, small size and 1 inch longer is the next size up. And 2 inches longer than my hand width means we are frying zucchini for supper.
Anyway, just count back six to seven weeks from when you want to start selling or eating the zucchini and mark that date on your calendar for seeding.
