in Nice I observed a longnecked moschata used as zucchini, i.e. courgette in French, but harvested BEFORE flowering, and which they called “courgette longue de Nice”. Observed in the field last summer: see the short internodes + the fact that they are all female flowers, and sometime doubled or tripled.
It’s very important to note that under the same name “Longue de Nice” 2 very different strains have been bred locally: one for summer use (harvested before flowering, short internodes, etc.) one for winter use (less fruits, usually huge).
yes indeed there is also this pepo used as summer squash “Ronde de Nice”
I’ll send to Malte seeds of both Trumpetta d’Albenga and “courgette longue de Nice”. I can send seeds of the first to anyone interested, got only a few of the second.
The trompettes/tromboncino used as summer squash are usually very light green. they don’t disintegrate at all during cooking (or lose much water). They also stay usable when much bigger (almost to full size).
I found some plants that produced darker courgettes (like on your photo, Thomas) but they didn’t have the right texture when cooking and didn’t work as well in traditional recipes. I have taken notes to keep a close eye on them this summer to figure out what’s going on…
Hi Malte,
I’m in East Anglia, supposedly dry and sunny… (coming from the Mediterranean, I have a different definition of dry and sunny )
Unfortunately we can’t exchange seeds between UK and EU (I really hope they rethink those rules soon!) but I could send you some seeds that my mum has been saving when I go over next. My original seeds were from Franchi seeds of Italy and they grew really well straight from the packet, which was surprising.
you have definitely a lot of seeds since ROW7 that look very interesting…thank you for give us a feedback on their flavors.
Hopefully you will manage to multiply them for our meeting in November!
Direct sown mid June this year. I would have wanted to direct sow them a few weeks earlier (had lots of work establishing the field as described here). They’re growing better than last year (where I planted from starts), but I can already tell that it might not be enough.
Most of the plants that survived germination are struggling. This part of the field was water-logged for a week or so - a big part of that was my own mistake, as I configured the irrigation computer in the wrong way. You can see the corn growing taller at the edge of the bed, where water could drain of more easily. Something similar happened to these zucchetta. The poor growth is probably caused by this in large part.
I noted this picture down as being from the zucchetta patch, but am starting to doubt myself because it is so much bigger. Maybe it was from the other moschata patch? Looks like a maxima. I’ll have to go check next time. Otherwise looks promising.
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