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I I absolutely love zucchini. They belong to gourds, a family of plants that has been cultivated for millennia and includes zucchini, cucumbers, and winter squashes—all crops I grow every season. Zucchini show remarkable vitality, with their mossy palmate leaves and curved tentacles. And with any luck, they’ll produce an abundance of fruit all summer long.
Most species are native to warmer climates so when grown in the UK they are cultivated as annuals. However, as well as the more familiar vegetables mentioned above, a number of more unusual (for the UK) courgettes can now be sown.
Some friends got married last year and gave their guests the perfect wedding “favor” – packets of seeds for their favorite edible plants. In my little hessian bag was a packet of cucamelon seeds. Cucamelons (Melothria scabra) are also known as mouse melons and produce fruit the size of grapes and labeled as watermelons, another squash.
As a modest-sized vine, cucamelon can be grown in containers, although you will need a net or trellis for them to climb. They are best eaten fresh – they taste like a small citrus cucumber – and are delightful as a side to summer drinks.
Bitter melons (Momordica charantia) – also known as bitter gourd or karela – grow on delicate vines similar to cucamelana, but produce gnarled, bumpy-skinned fruits with bitterness that can be an acquired taste. They featured regularly in the Mauritian cooking I grew up with, and despite hating their taste as a child, I took to them. A few years ago I successfully grew some fruits and gave them to my parents as an apology for all the times I picked my nose.
In the same season, I had my own greenhouse for the first time, so I made a small space in it for a loofah plant (Luffa cylindricaand other varieties). While their fruit is cooked as a vegetable throughout Asia, I grew mine to fully ripen until the inside became stringy.
After removing the flesh, I was left with a natural sponge to clean up and enough seeds to share and grow again for years to come.
Loofahs need a long summer season, so it’s best to start them early and grow them under cover. The only way to grow them this year will be to purchase nursery grown plants.
Sow pumpkin seeds over the next few weeks in a warm, sheltered spot to help them germinate. Because this family of plants is not hardy, wait until the nights begin to warm and the risk of a drop in temperature has passed before planting in their final location.
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