We are going to talk about one of the stars of the vegetable garden, I am of course talking about zucchini! It is a vegetable that many French people grow in the vegetable garden for many reasons. The first is that it is a fairly simple crop to grow successfully in the vegetable garden.
It is also a very productive culture and finally it is quite simple to successfully sow zucchini in a pot, because the seeds are rather large. Despite everything, there are still some tips to follow in order to have more abundant harvests.
The first thing to know is that zucchini needs plenty of watering in order to produce vegetables. We’re talking about 2 to 3 waterings per week with a 5 L watering can! To make you save some wateryou can of course mulch your zucchini plants with hay, straw, dead leaves or linen mulch.
Create a tank around your zucchini plant
When watering, you may notice that the water runs off because of the crust of earth that forms on the surface. This crust forms with unmulched soil that receives plenty of sunlight. To avoid this phenomenon, you can make a tank around your zucchini plant. That is to say, you will make a mound of earth in the shape of a circle around your plant. With this tip, when watering, the water will remain in this bowl to be absorbed little by little.
To have a good production of zucchini, you need a very rich land. For this, you have several solutions, the first which consists of adding one or two handfuls of compost to the feet of your plants and the second to make a fermented extract of comfrey which you make with 100 grams of fresh leaves for 1L of water.
After mixing everything for several days, as soon as there are no bubbles on the surface, you will be able to use it to boost your plants. But beware ! You will need to dilute your fermented extract at a rate of 10% in water before watering your plants.
Afterwards, there must of course be good pollination, because without it, the flowers will simply not transform into fruit! To do this, you must first differentiate between male flowers and female flowers. Female flowers develop after the presence of a fruit. Unlike male flowers which develop at the end of a stem.
If you don’t have enough pollinators in the vegetable garden, the fruits will abort. You will observe small yellow zucchini which will fall at the base of your plant. To avoid this problem, you can carry out manual pollination. To do this, you will collect a male flower, then you rub the male flower with the pollen on the female flower delicately.
If your zucchini plant only produces male flowers, your soil is probably not rich enough. Don’t hesitate to add a handful of compost to the base of each plant. If your plant only produces female flowers, be patient, the male flowers will arrive.
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