Kitchen Garden Forum

Can anyone advise on good varieties of these?

We recently bought some that were around the size of a tennis ball, medium green with lots of small orange flecks all over them. They tasted great - any ideas of equivalent ones we could grow in the UK?

Evening Colin,
There are several examples in Tucker's catalogue.I can't recommend any of them because I hate eating courgettes but will grow them for others to eat if asked.

Aldi sell round courgette seed and I've grown them for years, not least because they're not too big.

I don't know why but I find it difficult to get my head round the concept of round courgettes. I'm quite happy to grow yellow tomatoes and purple beans and carrots but somehow round courgettes don't excite me. I think it may possibly be the way I cut vegetables for cooking - round things somehow just seem more awkward to cut into nice equal sized pieces.

Primrose wrote:I don't know why but I find it difficult to get my head round the concept of round courgettes. I'm quite happy to grow yellow tomatoes and purple beans and carrots but somehow round courgettes don't excite me. I think it may possibly be the way I cut vegetables for cooking - round things somehow just seem more awkward to cut into nice equal sized pieces.

You could always stuff it

Ok, I've now tracked down a few:
Eight Ball
Tondo di Piacenza

Will let you know how I get on.

Hi Primrose,
Last time I grew round Courgettes I picked them fairly young and just pricked the skins and cooked whole. At the size they are meant to be picked there is nothing to stuff.
JB.

I tried Eight Ball last year and wasn't very impressed. Much prefer the usual ones, flavour wise.
Cheers.

We shall be growing Eight Ball (from Medwyn Williams) for the first time this year, mainly for the village show in September. I am just hoping that the judge will see them as courgettes because, some years ago, when I entered a round marrow, it was disqualified as "not according to schedule" because the judge did not recognise it as a marrow!