Size Matters When Harvesting Zucchini 

I love your science emphasis. One thing I would add. Almost all of the nutrition of Zucchinis is in the shell, so while the harvest weight of the smaller ones was significantly less than the giant ones, I would bet the total nutritional value per plant was about the same.

I was taught to pick just the first flush of courgette as baby courgette, to encourage the plants to bush out early and set more flowers. My goal is to produce the biggest yield of sellable courgette, so I think this still makes sense, but I will change my harvesting strategy, to avoid picking small courgette throughout the season, to increase my yield a bit, based on your trial

There's a good use for big courgettes... My grandma pepares them stuffed with grinded meat, grinded bread, egg, pepper and parsley. You cut them in half, take the seeds off, stuff and cook for 45 minutes at 180°C in the oven. Put some olive oil on top before serving. They're delicious!

Seed ball! I've never heard of this, very interesting. How low waste! This might work with my small seed starting set up. Can you make a video on how the seed ball concept turned out?

This is exactly what I was wondering when I started harvesting small fruits instead of letting them grow to full size. I am glad someone is doing these experiments as I can't really dedicate the space for it myself.

It explains why our courgette plants stay small: my wife harvests them only when they are large and uses them to make a very tasty soup that even can be frozen. The only thing to avoid is: processing seeds that have a hard shell. Maybe you can market the large ones better when you handout some soup recipes attuned to your local taste...

FYI, here in Italy most gardeners pick (and sell at the market) only zucchini that are very small. In fact they are sold with the flower still attached, which is a delicacy fried in batter. Plants are replaced mid season by a new batch and a normal size family garden will have 4 to 8 plants growing at any given time. Personally I prefer medium sized zucchini as I don’t eat the flowers (trying to avoid fried food 😅). So I grow only three plants giving them about a square meter each and letting them grow as they wish to do. One more thing, zucchini really do not like to be transplanted. It is highly recommended to grow them directly in the soil, placing 3-4 seeds per hole spaced one meter apart and then keeping only the best plant per hole. From my limited experience I noticed that when growing this way the plants are much stronger and healthier, despite any adverse conditions. To water build a circular ridge with soil all around each plant and water inside that every evening after sunset possibly with water stored in containers outdoors to be at the same temperature as the soil Finally, I have tagged you one a few posts on my IG account so you can see a variety called “trombette di Albenga” which we really love growing. It grows large fruits which store well and are delicious both raw and grilled . I grow them on arched trellises in between my raised beds so that they hang from it, however if you have the space you can also grow them on the ground and they will get a more circular shape. If you are interested in trying them and you have difficulties finding the seeds let me know and I will gladly send you a few packets from Italy!

It's marvelous that you take the time to produce such detailed trails! Thank you!

I think a modification to your method should you attempt this trial next year would be to pick all plants at the smaller size for a period of 15-30 days to increase the plant sizes uniformly. You could then allow the medium, large and marrow sizes to form before picking and see if there are any differences in overall yield and weight/texture per courgette. Looking at your graph, approximately 20 days looks like a starting point, but you know what size the plants were are various parts relating to your graph. I prefer softer centre courgettes so usually buy the larger girth courgettes in Lidl when I see them. I really liked the seed ball idea, I had forgotten about that one. I’m still yet to try it.

Hey, love your videos. I have about 700 plants on my farm. Daily harvest, and it is the first harvest of the day, due to our restaurants wants them with open flowers. We harvest about 70-80 per plant. But that's because we harvest from 4cm upwards.

Wasn't bothered by the background noise at all. Worth the setting.

Hi Bruce. I went to see your allotments last weekend. What a beautiful & productive space. I didn't get to see you, maybe I will the next time, who knows. But I had the chance to get a little tour of the place from a very friendly & knowledgeable lady. Thanks once more for sharing such detailed & instructive information online. I always look forward to your next video 🙂🌱🌱

I love this data-driven content. First class!

A perfect video in every respect! Lots of useful information, presented in a detailed but interesting format, without too much filler. I learned a lot. Thanks!

Love your trials bud. Consider growing vertically meaning, but the leaves below the last harvested squash or soon after. The canopy is smaller and the plant is more manageable. Grow up a string like a tomato.

Thanks for reporting on your many growing trials. Worth considering the option to let some marrows grow large to mature by sun ripening, with hard skin (like Halloween pumpkins) then store for a few months in a cool, dark, frost-free place, such as a garage/shed. Steamed sliced (de-seeded) marrow is a worthwhile veggie alternative for the winter months.

Thank you so much for doing these trials, you are literally trying all the things I have always wondered about but never have the space or resources to test myself. We can really learn a lot about improved ways of growing from this research, I myself have put some of your findings into action already.

Appreciate your little experiment! For posting this.

That's a wonderfully informative trial. It answers many questions I've had about growing courgettis and when I should harvest them. Many thanks for your efforts. Cheers.

Very interesting trial!! My house cow Custard used to love marrows, no matter how large! I would slice them lengthwise and sprinkle with salt. She helped out the overwhelmed zucchini growing neighbours. The comparative weights are useful because I want to grow the maximum weight for my goats this summer, to give them a balanced diet of brassicas, beets, roots, and other categories. Too much of any one variety is not healthy. I had a problem last year in Tasmania, with my zucchini not being pollinated, so had a disappointing yield. The seedlings I bought seemed to produce very few male flowers, so female flowers were either not pollinated at all, or only partially, and the ends rotted off. So this year I will plant a whole packet of seeds, pick the first ones small to grow large plant, then allow them to grow to medium large size

this was such useful information! my partner and i have been eating more zucchini lately and we grew some this year, but we've been unsure and of different opinions on when and how to harvest. now we can be more intentional about it!

Thanks for this experiment! It answered a host of questions I created for myself this year with my own zucchini harvesting habits. It was my first year with really large and stable plantings.

I really enjoy your tests !

Nice data and alot of work I don't need to do

A good way to save space growing courgettes is to grow them vertically, it also makes it much easier to harvest, prune old leaves and having the leaves off the soil will slow down disease.

Very interesting, thank you

Like your graphs very much!

Thanks .exactly what i was looking for.

Thanks for the brilliant work learn a lot

Enjoyed your musings on this topic as always

Wow, science! This is a most thoughtful study that answers questions most of have, but are unable to do ourselves.

Great lesson

Thx! Great experiment

Great work!

Intresting video, thanks!

😂😂😂 clickbait got me. Always a fan though.

nicely done!

Thanks!

Those big ones are amazing stuffed. I scrape out the seeds to create a cavity and stuff them with ground beef rice and chopped veggies then bake them in the oven. Its a great way to use them giant's. Sometimes I feed them to my chickens or pigs. Another great video! I love your scientific approach.

Interesting. I recently started summer squash so I'm going to try your experiment once they go in the garden.

Very interesting as it's always difficult to get courgette at exactly the right time . The seed ball thing looks interesting must try to remember it and try next year

I either save the big ones for seed or toss them in the compost. I don't like them at all. Zucchini and yellow squash are my favorite vegetables though. I live in Mississippi and the weather here makes for a long growing season so it doesn't hurt my feelings so much to toss a few here and there. I prefer them on the small side and that requires vigilance bc the rich soil and optimal conditions here mean you have to check them every day or you'll wake up to a zucchini log when it was the size of your thumb the day before😂

Your experiment was highly interesting, thank you for your hard work and sharing your results with us. I prefer large courgettes and hate that i can only buy the small ones. I think i might try growing one plant next year for myself. I live on the 3rd floor with a balkony place on the northside or a southside windowfront with metal lattice, still thinking where to grow. Maybe 2 plants for experimenting would be an idea.

Can you tell us more about these seed balls? You might want to consider leaving the blooms on those small zucchini. Many people like the 2 for 1 deal :)

Definitely appreciate this trial you did as I plan my own zucchini/Courgette trial this next year. I grew up n a subsistence farm. I don't remember my mother ever harvesting the small ones because she felt it was wasteful today them that small when you could just wait a little longer to have big ones. She would cut the marrow in half and then slice them thick lengthwise, flour them and starting with a cold pan would fry in lard until soft through and through until tender. Because she did have high heat they would frequently be scorched, mushy from overcooking and frequently we would have to remove fully developed seeds. I thought I hated zucchini until my late 20s when as a guest (which means you have to eat it) I was served some very tasty small ones. Any way, for my experiment I will need a high volume by weight so now I can plan on having one plant to harvest the young tender ones and a number of plants to grow the narrows. While I knew there would be fewer in quantity with the narrows I had no idea idea whether the number would be reduced so much that total weight would be lower.. Thank you.

Thank you for an excellent comparison of the different sizes vs weight of harvest. Although I also prefer the smaller sizes in general, not just for flavor but for consumption (as it is only 2 of us) my Mom asks me for 1 marrow each year that she can split and stuff! 💕

Thanks Bruce. Really thorough as usual and love your presentation of the results (& the forest backdrop!). I'd recommend trying striato di Napoli and Trieste white. They both seem to stay at a medium "courgettey" size for longer than other varieties. Mentioned in a different comment that it would be interesting to know dry matter content as well as weight at each size but that's maybe too much work. Carole deppe has some interesting info in Tao of gardening on courgette drying for storage. She says some varieties taste awful but a couple are tasty. Interesting alternative option for courgette soup in the winter. I'm also just finding at the moment Parthenon (paleocarpic) has been able to produce courgettes for longer than some of my other plants but it could be due to a lack of male flowers after letting some big marrows form. Kind regards, Ben

Hi Bruce I grew 7 Courgette plants this year and I must have given about 60 or 70 away. Romanesco was the best this year not black beauty!👍

Thanks for the in depth look at the yearly bounty and challenge of zucchini! I recommend Costata Romanesco variety. They are delicious small and large and keep a nice firm, drier texture.

I have been taking my larger ones I will cut them up, freeze on a cookie sheet, and then food saver bags. The taste I noticed it there was no change because I doctored it up with salt, pepper, garlic salt and butter. Those smaller ones it’s about supply and demand. If you have a lot of supply but no demand your freezer space becomes a non existent

I've haven't previously seen American sites that don't extoll the production of large courgettes...yuck !! even the pigs don't want to eat them !. The big ones can be made into fritters but no thanks. More than 6 inches is not worth keeping as far as we are concerned. Sometimes the chooks will eat them, and the pigs will (if you break them up) but no thanks - in this case, size does matter> The first analytical review review of courgette production and size/production weight from a US site that I have seen - well done

They definitely are not as pleasant when they get too big. However, instead of compost , cube them up and boil them in grape or any fruit juice and make sweet treats out of them. This video is close to home for me, I love growing these (when the pumpkin flies leave us alone)

I always remove my first flowers on my squashes until the plant is a decent size. I have noted that the plant stops growing and the squash fruit seems to sit there doing nothing plant is small. My opinion is squashes try to fruit early before the plant has got big enough to produce and grow.

It would be cool as he'll if you had a web page where we could go to absorb this information in the graphs and quickly cross reference other studies you have done

It would be interesting to see the total weight graph, adjusted for the usable weight. As per my experience with marrows, ca. 40% of its weight is seeds, pith and rind, whereas the smaller ones have almost zero waste. Adjusting the yields for large zucchinis and marrows gives 15 and 16.2 kilos/plant respectively, which is still more than the smaller ones, but much less so.

I've never been successful with zucchini, but I did have a glut of cucumbers, another crop that is best picked small. Just finding them before they got too big to enjoy was difficult. It makes me want to try growing white cumbers, just to make finding them easier.

Seed ball is a great idea

Try lemon squash, they were my favorites this summer. Big hit wit chef's and csa customers.

Great video and information. Have you thought about growing them up a string so they don't crowd the ground. Might take up less space?

Came for the innuendo 🥒 stayed for the science 👩‍🔬

I grew yellow and green courgettes in the same space again this year. The yellow ones are generally less prolific than the green ones. Typically they are smaller and develop more slowly. This year for some reason the green ones were very slow to increase in size.

I still like to take the Huge ones and Grill em... Just a little salt & pepper... Maybe whatever spices you like (less is more) The hard part is cutting them just right Sooo that they cook evenly.... Slightly "mushy" inside, but still slightly crisp at the outside... For whatever reason, whenever i harvest when small, they all die out... So i just let em grow until the next set is healthy

Interesting. I've done a quantitative study too on my own garden, but I was measuring length, not weight, on about 16 plants. I found that on good summer weather days, a plant with 1 big one and at most one small one was growing the zucc length about 1.5-2 inches per day on each, but if there were two big or more than two, or a dark rainy day (even warm), that slowed to about 1" per day. I prefer them around 8-9" which is maximal flesh but still before the seed core starts to get unappetizing. I grow the Noche variety. Maybe I should start tracking weight this year. I've already harvested over 50, but have a long season still ahead and two big standup freezers to put it all in (diced or shredded), so I want as much as I can get right until frost (Atlantic Canada).

Good video. Would you consider doing a video on those seed balls? How do you keep them in form and properly moist so they don't disintegrate? Thanks for the consideration

I would be very interested in the water to solid ratio of the fruits. You could dehydrate a fruit of each size or the same weight of fruit in a dehydrator to see what remains after the water is removed. The smaller ones contain less water for sure, but I suspect that the larger marrows must also put on more 'solid' weight. It could give a different perspective on calories of different sizes.

This is a personal preference, but I am not a fan of the texture of the seed area inside these squash. On the larger fruits, I tend to cut this area out and eat only the more dense flesh exterior. I am curious to see how much weight difference there would be between the harvest of your preferred size and of the largest size once this part is subtracted from the total.

Thank you for sharing. New subscriber to your channel ❤ Can you make a video on how you make the seed balls? Thanks

Try growing up fence stakes. Less space needed and easier access to fruit

Bruce, do you have a video on the soil balls, or a link to the video where you learned it? I've tried soil blocks & they just fall apart. Personally I prefer the marrows, cut into 3/4" thick rounds, marinated in olive oil, herbs & spices , then BBQed. You should try it.

That's what she said

somewhat related... I have found the plant to be more productive if I cut the stems of the fruits verses snapping them off and leaving a a bit of fruit at times on the plant...

I'm growing just two grey speckly zucchinis this year, planted about 3-4 weeks apart, and hoping for no runaways, but they seem to appear in the space of ONE DAY! I don't know what to do with the marrows anyway. Very interesting !

Thankfully our hens don't seem to get bored of giant marrows sliced lengthways long after the novelty of the courgette glut has passed for us, and they'll happily hollow them out

Bruce, how do you form the root ball. Is there a special additive to keep its form intact.

I've never had more then 2 Zuchinins over the last 2 years

Mine hardly grew anything this year! Was very dry, think that's why. They seemed to be smaller, denser, greener too. But all my squashes were under productive - lack of pollination and having all male or all female at one time. Frustrating. Only in September with more rain did they take off ... Too late, it's not the warm September I was hoping for

Instead of aiming to pick zucchinis at a particular size/weight, I'm wondering what would happen if you picked them at different intervals, such as "daily, every second day, weekly" or some other arrangement. At any plant's harvest, all visible fruit would be removed, no matter the size. So there may be some distribution of branching vs. enlarging fruit.

I guess I'm somewhat lucky I dislike courgettes but love marrows then. Its odd to see that the best yield comes from an odd inbetween that is closer to a marrow. As sombody who is interested in your simple gardening method, leaving the courgettes to grow would be in my interest but I'm interested to see what variety does to a plant

I wonder if the influence of size on number of courgettes (specifically the difference in number between small and medium) may be down to the formation of seeds in the immature fruits? I wonder this because of seeing something similar with seed formation in top fruit (apples), where it's better to thin early as there seems to be a correlation between timing of thinning with number and size of fruit.

I make dill pickle spears out of the large ones.

Are you shooting the commentary elsewhere? Looks a lot like southern Ontario

what if you trimmed off all the leaves below the ones that you take off each time you harvest one? Kinda like tomatoes are usually pruned. That way you'd control the growth a bit, but allow it to continue. (It seems you mentioned that near the end). What was that dirt ball with the seed in it? Do you have a video on it.

Im trying to find information about large zucchini that hasnt pollinated yet. Flower hasnt opened and it has grown to about 10 inches

Dang the powdery mildew is real on that zucchini plant what a shame not your fault just sad to see 😊

Could you turn the larger courgettes into loofah sponges if they do not get consumed? Exfoliation is important.

I have yet to be successful with courgettes, I try again next year... Birdy

How do you keep away the vine borer

I have a huge issue with cut worms and cabbage moth larvae eating everything. Even my herb garden has been decimated by those pesky green cabbage worms. I didn’t mind it at first because I wanted a pesticide and herbicide free garden. But I’m so worried now. I grow mostly in pots at the moment because everything else has been literally eaten in my ground garden. Except for the weeds Ofcourse. I’m not sure what to do.. other than pick them off one by one when I see them appear at night and day. But there is just so many of them and I’m afraid I won’t be able to stop them from eating everything. They are even eating my fresh grown mint leaves. I had no clue those moth larvae even enjoyed herbs. XD

Is it worth collecting seeds from an F1 plant?

What type was the yellow one?

Oh YES! I just pulled my plants out, I've made more than 150 loaves of zucchini bread. On top of making zucchini noodles, zucchini stir fry & pretty much anything else I wouldn't be looked at weird for adding zucchini. My family was zucchinied OUT! 😂 & We only had 4 plants. How do you save the zucchini, to use over the winter?

I have only gotten 2 zucchinis form and a mouse got both, how do I get them to produce more

I know that spacing is just one factor but how much space do you give your plants to get them to get this large?

I like the smaller medium ones too The larger ones just don't have the flavor and crispness Thanks for the ideas These are my favorite summer veggie

Small zukes have a higher protein content.

I grow mine vertically

that's a lot of fruit per plant

It's really a bit of a moot point, you let them grow to whatever size you or your customers want, My customers will not buy small ones at all, they want them at your large size, and they will happily buy marrows as well. I have found that if you are getting to many at once, let a few plants go to marrows, they then sit there doing nothing until you remove the marrows, and then they start producing nicely again.

bigger fruits have bigger seeds. i prefer smaller seeds.

First