This may sound like a rather odd title for a post, but bear with me….
If you’re growing courgettes this year, right now you’re likely to be inundated with them, and busy trying to find new recipes to use them in or giving them away to friends, neighbours and any random stranger who’ll take them. This makes it the perfect time to grow a name in one of your courgettes; it’s dead easy, takes a couple of minutes and is an absolutely brilliant, fun gardening activity to try with children.
All you need to do is grab a toothpick, skewer or other pointy implement (obviously not too pointy if kids are doing it), and choose a small courgette still attached to the plant. Gently scratch your chosen word into the surface of the courgette – you don’t need to go very deep, and it’s worth supervising children as they do this. We’ve found that making short scratches and building up each letter bit by bit works best.
You will probably see a small amount of liquid seeping out of the letters, don’t worry about this as the skin will seal itself up pretty quickly.
Once you’re happy with your handiwork, all you need to do is leave the courgette to get bigger. As it grows, the letters become paler and obviously they grow too.
Courgettes grow really fast, so you don’t have to wait long for huge names – ours took about 2 weeks to get to this size!
It’s up to you how big you want your veg to get, obviously the longer you can wait the bigger your harvest. My children love doing this and it’s not just the wow factor of the huge name at the end that they enjoy; it’s also the regular checking to see how big they’re getting and the comparing between each other.
Another good reason to do this is that by letting a courgette grow really big on the plant you’ll slow down the development of new ones – quite useful when you’ve got a glut on your hands!
If you’d like more fun gardening ideas, check out my post on 50 fun ways to get kids gardening for lots of inspiration.
If you decide to give this fun gardening activity a go I’d love to see some pictures of your giant names – you can share them with me on my twitter or Facebook page. Do you think you’ll be giving it a try this summer?
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Oh I just adore this and will def give it a try next year!
Do it, it’s lots of fun!
Wow this is such a cool idea! I failed miserably with almost all my veg this year, but doing this with my girls next year for sure!!! #whatevertheweather
It’s so much fun and takes a couple of minutes – I’m wondering if it will work with squash too, we have a bit of a glut at the moment so I think we’ll give it a try!
What a brilliant idea, not least because my kids can argue about anything – including who grew what! #WhatevertheWeather
Ha ha sounds familiar!
This is a brilliant idea we grow courgettes and will definitely be giving this ago next year. Love your pictures and your giants 🙂 thank you #whatevertheweather x
I think next year I need to do a gallery of everyone’s giant names!
That is such a cool idea! My parents do all the veg growing, so next year, I am so getting them to grow courgettes so we can do this. Although, did the kids get sad when you cut into them? Sabrina xx #whatevertheweather
We haven’t eaten their giant names,they were on display in the kitchen for ages! The kids knew they wouldn’t be able to keep them forever and thankfully they were OK about adding them to the compost heap eventually. We took lots of photos though!
I looove this idea!! We’re definitely doing this next year, O would love seeing his name grow and of course it’s great for learning their letters too. Hee hee, maybe we should try and grow 26 courgettes (unlikely as all 3 of ours died this year from slug attack!), one for each letter of the alphabet! Or math games, write numbers on them then they need to add together the numbers on the courgettes they’ve picked. Ha ha! I will need a lot of courgettes! Thanks for the fantastic idea and for linking up to #Whatevertheweather 🙂 x
Love the numbers idea! We had such a big glut this year that we could have done a whole alphabet 🙂
This is an absolutely brilliant idea!!! I really want to try this with Evie next year. We could have a family competition to see whose grows the most. Thank you so so much for linking this to #whatevertheweather x
Ooh great idea to make it into a family competition – a bit like seeing who can grow the tallest sunflower but edible, bonus!