This is a large vegetable family consisting of cucumber, squash, zucchini, pumpkin, and all your favourite melons. These warm season annual vegetables love warmer temperatures and situations that are sunny and have good air flow.
How to grow your Curcurbits Family:
- Choose full sun in a protected location.
- If growing cucumbers, you can either erect a small trellis or allow them to grow along the ground. Squash and zucchini won’t need a trellis.
- Add good levels of organic matter such as Rocky Point ActivGrow Soil Improver and Cow Manure Plus to thesoil.
- Adding a little gypsum to the soil along with compost will also ensure good levels of calcium.
- Plant as seedlings or sow seeds directly into the garden beds or pots.
- If growing in pots use Rocky Point Organic Potting Mix.
- Mulch and keep well-watered during the growing season and during hot dry spells.
- Water early in the morning to allow plants to dry out during the course of the day, this helps prevent fungal diseases like powdery mildew getting a hold when plants are kept damp overnight.
- Fertilise on a regular basis – every two weeks with an organic liquid fertiliser and give your plants a side dressing of Poultry Manure Fertiliser Pellets every 6 or so weeks.
- Harvesting cucumbers, squash and zucchini can take around 8-10 weeks to reach harvestable size, but you can pick them earlier or later, depending on what you want to do with them in the kitchen. You can even eat zucchini flowers; they have become quite a delicacy of recent times.
Varieties of Cucurbits Family
Cucurbita – squash, pumpkin, zucchini
Citrullus – watermelon, honeydew melon
Cucumis – cucumber, honeydew melon, rock melon
Momordica – bitter melon
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