Brian’s Blog: Take My Zucchini, Please!
Believe it or not, it's "Sneak Some Zucchini On To Your Neighbors Porch Day". I've been there, done that, sort of.
Pennsylvanian Tom Roy created this holiday to encourage sharing zucchini. "Due to the overzealous planting of zucchini, citizens are asked to drop off baskets of the squash on neighbors' doorsteps."
This brings back a lot of memories. One summer when I was in college, my Dad planted this HUGE garden. He planted it on some creek bottom land that was part of our farm's home place. We had run our horses and a few calves on this piece of ground for years, so natural fertilizer had been well worked into the soil. Combining that with ample watering from our pasture irrigation source, this garden was beyond prolific.
My Dad created a problem for himself. He planted eight hills of zucchini. Now, anyone that has ever grown zucchini knows that that will grow way too much. Couple that with good fertilizer, regular watering, and a hot Yakima Valley summer, and you have a recipe for a zucchini apocalypse!
It was the job of my brother and I to thin out the squash on a daily basis, picking them when they were young and tender. The amount was so vast, our friends and neighbors quit being polite when we came to share the bounty. "Enough", they cried! "Take it somewhere else!"
On top of that, if you miss the occasional individual zucchini when thinning, and they grow under the conditions I've described, I swear they will grow a foot a day. My brother and I took some of these big, green squash out of the garden that were actually as big as my thigh. Our solution, throw them into a tributary of Toppenish Creek that ran through our property so they would float away. We got away with it until the farmer a mile downstream called our Dad to ask him why these "damn big zucchini" were clogging up his irrigation diversion dam!
I guess that was our version of sneaking it on to our neighbors porch! And you know, to this day I still like zucchini! Well, a little anyway.
So I challenge you today to sneak some zucchini onto your neighbor's porch. Just don't get caught!