courgettes - The Bridge Cottage

Next year, when I’m sowing courgette seeds, will someone please remind me that eight courgette plants are far too many?

The great courgette glut

Someone over on The Bridge Cottage Way Facebook page suggested this week that courgette seeds be sold strictly in packets of three to avoid overplanting. I think they have a point.

We’ve had a few takers for homegrown courgettes and cucumbers from the table outside Bridge Cottage. We are dripping in them and it’s courgettes with everything at the moment.

August Harvest Minestone

We’re making minestrone and ratatouille for the freezer and adding courgettes to risotto and ragu. This week I make a courgette and chocolate traybake cake, which has gone down a treat. Our youngest son usually shuns courgettes but has gone back to his own house today with a box of courgette and chocolate cake tucked under his arm. Another hit was the courgette and cheddar soda loaf from BBC Good Food.

Courgettes are being added to risottos and curries – I love a prawn and courgette curry, and soups are being made to go in the freezer for the winter months. I’ve just shared a photo of courgette, tomato and basil soup bubbling away in the pan over on Twitter (@suereedwrites) and had a request for the recipe, so here it is:

Courgette, Lentil, Tomato and Basil Soup.

Courgette, Tomato, Lentil & Basil Soup

I onion, finely chopped.

1.5 pints veg stock

100 g red lentils

2 courgettes

400g tin chopped tomatoes

handful fresh basil

Gently fry the chopped onion in a tablespoon of olive oil until soft. Add veg stock, tomatoes and lentils, bring to a boil and cook for ten minutes. Add courgettes and chopped basil and cook for another 5 minutes. Season with salt and pepper then blitz to a smooth soup.

Easy peasy! My friend Ann has been making potato, courgette, cheddar and fennel seed soup, so I must give that a whirl! Don’t be afraid to experiment with your soups, and do share your successes on our social media channels. I’ve shared the minestrone recipe in a separate post.

From the goddess of the kitchen, Nigella Lawson’s easy courgette pasta sauce is a family hit, and today I’ve made sweet potato and courgette bhajis for lunch. I thought I’d share the recipe for those with you here. It’s really very simple. I’ve added sweet potato, but you could add grated carrot or any other veg, or keep it simple and just use courgette.

Courgette Bhajis

Courgette Bhajis

serves 4

2 medium courgettes (or 1 courgette and half a sweet potato or small carrot)

1 medium onion

2 tsp each cumin, coriander, turmeric

half tsp chilli powder or half finely chopped chilli (optional)

3 tbsp gram flour

sparkling water to mix

4 tbsp vegetable oil

Courgette Bhajis

Grate the veg and chop the onion. Mix well with the spices and season with salt and pepper. mix in the flour and enough sparkling water to bind it all together – about 4 tbsp.

Heat some vegetable oil in a heavy-based frying pan and fry on each side til golden brown. Drain and serve with seasonal salad.

Other links to recipes mentioned:

Courgette and chocolate cake

Nigella Lawson Pasta with Courgettes

Courgette and Chocolate Cake

Minestrone

Courgette and Cheddar Soda Loaf

As ever, we’d love you to share your thoughts, either by leaving a comment here or on our social media pages, where this article will be shared.

You can find the Bridge Cottage Way on Facebook Twitter and Instagram.

You might enjoy some of the writing and ideas in other sections of this website, as we look towards leading more sustainable lives by growing our own food and creating dishes in line with seasonal eating, or head to our handy ‘Month by Month’ guides to find out what we have been doing here at Bridge Cottage as the months go by:

Many thanks for reading.

With Facebook and Instagram algorithms being fickle friends at times, be sure to get all new posts from The Bridge Cottage Way by signing up for the mailing list here. This will go our four times a year, with the seasons in Spring, Summer, Autumn and Winter. We, of course, will not share your details with third parties, and you have the right to unsubscribe at any time.

Companion Planting – Courgette growing with calendula and borage.

Companion planting. Like us, plants have friends, and like us, they have are some they like more than others. For example, my potatoes love hanging out with horseradish but put the squashes right off their game.

Companion planting

We’ve known about companion planting for a while, and in the greenhouse, we take care to grow French Marigolds alongside the tomatoes. As well as looking very pretty, these attract the hoverflies, which much on aphids and other pests. Basil likes to be there too, but at a distance and prefers to stay in its pots.

Tomatoes and Marigolds. Companion Planting in the Greenhouse

We find it useful to start a few trays of calendulas, French marigold and nasturtiums off in the early spring, to pop in alongside beans, or in pots. Our courgettes are loving the companionship of borage and nasturtiums and are just coming into that prolific stage where you are scratching your head in the kitchen for some new inspiration with courgette recipes. The borage self-seeds from the year before – although strictly an annual, once you have borage in the garden, it won’t leave you.

Herb Society UK Companion Planting Poster

We follow the Herb Society UK on both Facebook and Instagram, and this year bought a very useful poster from them, which is pinned to the back of the potting shed door. It gives a long list of plants, their companions, and antagonists.

I’d been wondering why, out of six squashes planted, two had yellowing leaves and were failing to thrive….the answer may well be that potatoes are antagonists to squashes. It will be interesting to see if they pick up once the potatoes have been dug up. We could move them, but where to? The garden is full to bursting. We may well pop a borage plant in there, as I see from my poster that borage is a good companion plant to squash – goodness knows, the borage is doing really well, providing masses of edible blue flowers as well as material to go in the dustbin for making organic comfrey feed.

The onions are about to be lifted, and I see from our chart that carrots and beetroot both like onions, so it seems a good idea to pop in a few rows of late carrots and beetroot once they’ve been dug up. Although I’ll have to sneak in the beetroot – Tim thinks it’s the food of the devil – I disagree!

Next year, I’m looking forward to trialling the Three Sisters method of planting squash, beans and sweetcorn together – though whether there will be enough sun for sweetcorn in Northumberland remains to be seen.

I had a quick look on the internet for useful links and companion planting charts and have found a few, which I hope will be helpful to you.

Here are the links:

As ever, we’d love you to share your thoughts, either by leaving a comment here or on our social media pages, where this article will be shared.

You can find the Bridge Cottage Way on Facebook Twitter and Instagram.

You might enjoy some of the writing and ideas in other section of this website, as we look towards leading more sustainable lives by growing our own food and creating dishes in line with seasonal eating, or head to our handy ‘Month by Month’ guides to find out what is seasonal and on topic:

Many thanks for reading.

With Facebook and Instagram algorithms being fickle friends at times, be sure to get all new posts from The Bridge Cottage Way by signing up for the mailing list here. This will go our four times a year, around the Summer and Winter Solstices, and the Spring and Autumn Equinox. We, of course, will not share your details with third parties, and you have the right to unsubscribe at any time.

Thanks for reading. Best wishes, Tim and Sue Reed

Tag Archive for: courgettes

The Great Courgette Glut. Season: July and August

Grow Better Veg with Companion Planting