hi I'm Stephen Orr and when you hear the term summer squash generally you might
think of these yellow squash here that are available pretty much all year round
in the supermarket but there's really a lot of other varieties of summer squash
and they're really easy to grow.
so one of the most common summer squashes is zucchini and a few years ago
if you told people we're having zucchini for dinner they would have been like
bored, but actually zucchinis are now a kind of a cool vegetable because of
zoodles, zucchini noodles, people use their spiralizer it's a kind of a low
starch low carbohydrate way to substitute for pasta and spaghetti. they
work well in all sorts of Italian dishes I think people have discovered that
zucchinis are really great plan to kind of combine with a lot of different
flavor profiles another one that's really beautiful it's called a zephyr
this is just a visual thing it is the same flavor basically as a zucchini or a
yellow summer squash but it has this nice bicolor.
something like this it's really good to show it to show it off is to eat it raw
and when you think of eating squash raw it sounds kind of maybe a little bland.
one way I like to do it is to use a vegetable peeler and just peel it off in
big strips big big flat strips and then lay it down on a plate squeeze some
lemon on the top and let that sit for about half an hour. that will kind of
almost cook the squash and then put some olive oil and salt and pepper and pesto
or whatever you want on top and you have a really great way to show this
beautiful color when you lay these these skins down that way. another great summer
squash is patty-pan this is a white a beautiful white one or these little guys
here these are all really good you can just chop them into pieces usually I
would carve them like pi pieces and so you can really see the colors and then
you can either steam them or bake them roast them all of those preparations
work really well if you if you put them in bite-sized pieces it works really
well in all sorts of pasta. so all of these plants are are beautiful and
really versatile kind of a great base to add all sorts of different spice
mixtures. zucchinis and summer squashes and patty-pan they grow on vining or
trailing plants. sometimes they're bushy the zucchinis can be like a big Bush but
even those bushy plants take up quite a lot of space so you probably not need a
lot of these. it's a heavy producer pick them this size are smaller the more you
pick of squash the more it will produce so the best way to do it is to take a
few seeds. most of these varieties come in all the
different great seed packets. that all you really need to do is plant those
about four or five seeds in a hill or in rows and then thin them out by snipping
out the extra plants you don't want and then let those grow to full size. as they
grow and start to bloom those each of those yellow flowers will turn into a
squash. so the best way to get the most squash is to take a paintbrush or even
your finger and go from plant to plant the way a bee would just to make sure
that they're all pollinated because all of those pollinated flowers flowers will
turn into a fruit. and the more as I said the more you pick the more fruit you'll
have. and picking these small is actually a really good way to use them as well
you could pickle them you could use them small in salads so just keep picking
your squash in the more you picked the more they'll come. their annual vine so
once they're done you can just throw the vines out and discard them. squash can be
really bothered by pests. they get the vine borer they get cucumber beetles
there's a variety of different pests that can attack summer squash. so just
keep an eye out for those look for organic ways to solve that problem. if
you do need to use any sort of insecticide go for something like
pyrethrum or something that is less toxic and you just want to keep those
those pests under control. if you do find you have pests one year move your plants
around. crop rotate this in case the previous year's beetles are hanging out
in the soil they'll have a harder time finding the plants later on. so if you
have a smaller space garden some of these smaller zucchinis or some of the
squash that grow in a bush form those are good for containers, you'll get a lot
of produce from the one container. and also you can try to grow them up instead
of out so you could try some of the more vining types you can try to train up a
trellis that way you can you can keep an eye on the plants and you won't have to
have so much space to grow them. and wherever you grow your squashes you just
make sure you water regularly. water once a week very deeply around the roots
don't spray the plants as much as possible because you do want to avoid
mildew and other fungi that will harm the leaves and harm the plant production.
so as we said earlier harvesting the zucchini this is about an optimal size
to harvest them for tender delicious zucchini. but you can
also make them the size of just you know a couple of inches all of these can be
grown where they're very very small and just use kind of like a starter or
something to put in a salad just because they're so beautiful even when they're
tiny. when you're picking the zucchini off the vines and the plants just make
sure you cut the plants, don't try to tug them off you're gonna damage both the
fruit and the plant if you tug it just make sure you cut it with a knife it's
the best way to get the the fruit off the vine when you're growing or buying
zucchini and summer squash just make sure because the skins are so fragile if
you're meaning to keep them around for a while make sure that you they don't have
any breaks or damage in them. because that well any sort of damage or bruising
will make the fruit start to rot. you know these are really ready and they're
not too hard if you can pierce the skin easily with your fingernail that's a
good tip that this plant is ready but once you do pierce that you want to cook
it pretty quickly. unlike winter squash, summer squash are
meant to be used really quickly within a week generally and I tend to keep mine
out at room temperature but if they start to if I worry I'm not gonna cook
them fast enough I can pop them in the fridge or make them last a little longer.
but they don't have the hard wax II coating that as a winter squash has so
they won't last as long. so in these last few weeks of summer it's just great to
have these plants producing so prolifically, and the more you pick the
more they'll produce all the way till frost.