6 Helpful Tips for Growing Zucchini Plants

Growing zucchini is popular because zucchini is one of the easiest plants to grow in your garden. Most gardeners can plant a few zucchini plants and watch the plants grow quickly without any problems.

I love zucchini. Aside from tomatoes, zucchini is the only vegetable that really signals summer to me. I love a whole bunch of zucchini recipes. So, I want to make sure our harvest is bountiful and it usually is. In fact, our harvest tends to be so bountiful that I beg my parents, family, and friends to share in it too.

Here are some tips we use when growing zucchini plants.
1) Plant at the right time
Zucchini plants are NOT frost friendly at all. If you plant your zucchini plants before the threat of frost has passed, you risk your entire harvest.
Zucchini don’t even like cold temperatures, but I can’t blame them!
So this means you have to resist the temptation and not plant too early. If the fruit forms in cold weather, it’s unlikely that it will grow well.

2) Choose the right place
Once you have found the right time to plant your zucchini, you need to decide where to plant zucchini in your garden. The spot you choose should receive full sun, so a garden bed that is shaded by a large tree is a BAD choice!

It should also be a moist, well-drained area. The site should not be soggy though! Be sure to add compost and organic matter to the soil you have selected for growing your zucchini plants.

3) Use succession planting
Many people don’t realize that growing zucchini plants is a good option for succession planting because they are not frost hardy. When we think of succession planting, we think of plants that grow from spring to fall, not plants that love summer.

Zucchini plants break this mold. These plants grow quickly and you can usually harvest the first fruits 40 to 60 days after planting.

To avoid drowning in piles of zucchini (which is definitely not a bad thing if you LOVE zucchini), start new plants two or three times a season. This allows you to extend your harvest season. Zucchini plants tend to produce a lot of fruit at once, then slow down to a halt.

Better yet, you don’t need to start zucchini plants indoors. Just plant these seeds in the ground.

4) Plant mounds of zucchini
Plant a mound of 2-3 zucchini plants together. This is important because zucchini have flowers that need to be pollinated to create the fruit you want. These flowers open for 1 day. Yes, 1 day! If pollination fails, you don’t get any zucchini, and that would be a shame. Planting multiple plants together improves the chances of pollination. Gardeners can choose to purchase seedlings or plant zucchini seeds directly in the garden.

5) Understanding zucchini pollination
So now you know that flowers open for a day, but did you know that there are male and female flowers on a zucchini plant. Both male and female flowers open at the same time but only a female flower creates a fruit. Male flowers are only for pollination.

On most new plants, the male flowers tend to set first, and then you’re frustrated because your plant is full of flowers and no fruit is forming. Don’t worry just yet, especially if you see pollinating insects fluttering around. The female flowers are on their way.

Female flowers have tiny fruits behind the base of the flower, making them easy to distinguish. If you are concerned about your crop, you can remove the male flowers and pollinate the female flowers yourself.

6) Mulch around your plants
Once the seedlings have emerged from the soil and established themselves, spread mulch around the base of your plants. This helps keep weeds at bay and the mulch also helps the soil retain moisture. Mulch also helps regulate soil temperature.

Now that you know how to grow zucchini plants, follow these tips and get to work. When summer comes around we’ll all want some beautiful, fresh zucchini from the garden!