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Growing Family

UK home and garden blog sharing ideas, inspiration and tips for busy family life, written by Catherine Hughes

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Fun gardening: How to grow your name in courgettes

June 20, 2018 by Catherine 14 Comments

Looking for fun gardening ideas to do with the kids? Here's how to grow names in courgettes - a quick, easy and fun activity that's perfect for summer!

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.

names in courgettes

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.

names in courgettes

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!

names in courgettes

names in courgettes

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 posts on 50 fun ways to get kids gardening and quick and easy vegetables to grow 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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Looking for fun gardening ideas to do with the kids? Here's how to grow names in courgettes - a quick, easy and fun activity that's perfect for summer!

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Filed Under: Gardening with Children Tagged With: Activity, Children, Courgettes, Family, Gardening with children, Grow Your Own, Summer, Vegetables

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Comments

  1. Becky says

    September 13, 2015 at 9:49 am

    Oh I just adore this and will def give it a try next year!

    Reply
    • Catherine says

      September 13, 2015 at 7:53 pm

      Do it, it’s lots of fun!

      Reply
  2. Nia says

    September 16, 2015 at 11:22 am

    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

    Reply
    • Catherine says

      September 16, 2015 at 11:30 am

      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!

      Reply
  3. Sarah says

    September 16, 2015 at 10:58 am

    What a brilliant idea, not least because my kids can argue about anything – including who grew what! #WhatevertheWeather

    Reply
    • Catherine says

      September 16, 2015 at 11:25 am

      Ha ha sounds familiar!

      Reply
  4. Mudpie Fridays says

    September 17, 2015 at 8:59 pm

    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

    Reply
    • Catherine says

      September 18, 2015 at 8:54 am

      I think next year I need to do a gallery of everyone’s giant names!

      Reply
  5. Sabrina (The Mummy Stylist) says

    September 17, 2015 at 10:19 pm

    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

    Reply
    • Catherine says

      September 18, 2015 at 8:58 am

      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!

      Reply
  6. Jenny says

    September 18, 2015 at 9:28 pm

    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

    Reply
    • Catherine says

      September 21, 2015 at 8:36 am

      Love the numbers idea! We had such a big glut this year that we could have done a whole alphabet 🙂

      Reply
  7. Chloe says

    September 20, 2015 at 8:31 pm

    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

    Reply
    • Catherine says

      September 21, 2015 at 8:37 am

      Ooh great idea to make it into a family competition – a bit like seeing who can grow the tallest sunflower but edible, bonus!

      Reply

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Hi, I’m Catherine. Welcome to Growing Family, a top UK home & garden blog sharing ideas, inspiration and tips for making the most of busy family life, indoors and out.
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