Zucchini

Zucchini is the most productive plant in the summer garden, famously prolific once it gets going; two plants feed a family and a third feeds the neighbours. The large orange-yellow blossoms are beautiful and edible, stuffed or fried, and one plant produces them daily through midsummer. Pick the male flowers freely (the ones on a thin stalk with no small fruit at the base) and the harvest is not reduced.

Sow directly once the soil has warmed, a week or two after last frost, an inch deep in hills 3 to 4 feet apart in rich soil with plenty of compost, or start indoors three weeks earlier in pots. Water deeply and regularly at the base; wet leaves bring on powdery mildew by late summer. A second sowing in early summer gives young plants that take over when the first ones tire.

The challenge is keeping up. Pick every two or three days at 6 to 8 inches; a fruit left to swell signals the plant to slow down. Squash vine borers tunnel the stems in early summer in much of the country, and squash bugs cluster under the leaves; a row cover until the first flowers, then hand-picking, is the organic answer. Bees are needed for pollination, so the cover has to come off. Deer and groundhogs are fond of zucchini.