Growing Zucchinis Made Simple: Varieties, Tips & Common Problems Solved
- Tammy Johnson
- 4 days ago
- 3 min read
Written and edited by Tammy 28th August 2025
Who else has picked a zucchini for dinner, then two nights later found its sibling out in the veggie patch the size of a submarine! No other vegetable grows as fast as a zucchini, honestly you can't turn your back for a minute! With the right tips up your sleeve, I promise you'll find zucchinis to be one of the easiest (and most rewarding) crops in your backyard.
The Best Zucchini Varieties to Grow
When it comes to choosing which variety of zucchini to grow, stick with reliable winners to guarantee a bumper crop. Choose varieties known not just for yield but for toughness too. Black Jack, is a classic that shrugs off most common garden stresses, Lebanese, smaller, growing with their tender pale fruit, boast strong disease resistance and popularity in smaller gardens, and Golden Zucchini, are a hardy performer that bounces back quickly from powdery mildew.
Feeding & Nurturing Your Zucchinis
Soil Prep: Improve your soil with some compost like Chockablok prior to planting, then water the seedlings in with Seasol Health treatment or Seamungus to ease transplant shock and give them a boost to get going. Once they're settled in mulch around them with a generous layer of Who Flung Dung.
Early Growth: Feed them with Rapid Raiser and a handful of Blood & Bone every 3–4 weeks. Blood and Bone gives that nice little boost of added Nitrogen that powers lush leaves early.
Flowering & Fruiting: Ease off the nitrogen but continue with the Rapid Raiser or switch to a phosphorus & potassium-rich fertiliser tailored to fruit and vegetables. Keep soil moist, mulch generously, and water regularly.
Flowers & Pollination
Zucchinis produce male flowers first, then females (the ones with baby zucchinis). If you begin noticing small, shrivelled zucchinis, is a sign of a poor pollination success rate.
The best way around this is to hand pollinate them yourself.
Pick a male flower, peel back petals, dust the pollen from the male flower into the female using a paintbrush. Best time to do this is in the morning while the blooms are fresh.
Common Zucchini Problems
As with anything you grow in the garden, zucchinis can face their fair share of challenges. Sudden extremes of heat or cold can easily stress the plants, while an overload of nitrogen often results in an explosion of leafy growth but little to no fruit. Poor pollination is another common culprit behind empty flowers or small, misshapen zucchinis. And of course, no gardener is a stranger to powdery mildew, the classic enemy that often strikes just as plants are hitting their stride.
Beating Powdery Mildew
Give plants space
Water soil, not leaves
Mulch well
DIY Spray: 1 tsp bicarb soda + 1L water + a few drops of liquid soap
Rotate crops yearly
Tam’s Tip 🌱
Don’t turn your back on zucchinis! Pick daily once fruiting starts, or you’ll end up with giants. Smaller zucchinis are sweeter, more tender, and perfect for the pan.
Harvest
As with most things in the garden, zucchinis are no different, smaller really is sweeter. Pick them young, around 15–20 cm, for the best flavour on your plate. Don’t be shy about harvesting often either; the more you pick, the more they will keep on giving. If you miss a few and end up with a monster zucchini (we’ve all been there!), just grate it into muffins, slice it for the freezer, or sneak it into a hearty soup. And just remember, two plants are more than enough to keep your kitchen well stocked all summer long, so unless you’re feeding a small army, you really don’t need a whole row!
So, there you have it, zucchinis care 101 made simple. With steady feeding, water, and a little pollination help, you’ll be dishing up fritters, pasta, and slices all season long.
Happy gardening😘🌱
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