Our friends and neighbours are no longer answering our calls or letting us near their back door. Apparently, they've had enough of our generous zucchini donations!
We have three zucchini plants in our garden and we get about three nice zucchinis a day - way more than our family of four can consume. We eat it raw with dip, pan fried with butter, grilled with olive oil, in salads, in grilled veggie mixes and, our all-time favourite, in chocolate zucchini loaf. Yum!
For eating purposes, we prefer our zucchini young and tender. But, every year, we like to let one or two zucchinis grow as big as they can get. Usually, we harvest the big guys at the end of August, dress them up, give them names and keep them as pets for a little while - good times at the Stewart house!

Turns out it's not such a big mystery after all. Having fruit "abort" happens quite often. Here's my cole notes on zucchini fruit production to help explain this phenomenon.
Zucchini plants have two types of flowers - male flowers and female flowers.
- Male flowers are smaller and last longer. They are attached directly to the stem. The male flower has one stamen that includes the anthers which carry the pollen.
- Female flowers are bigger and are attached to an "emergent zucchini" (we call them baby zucchinis, scientists call them ovaries). The female flowers have the pistil which contain the stigma (the four or five sticky bulby things). The pollen has to reach the stigma for the baby zucchinis to grow.
- The ovaries wither up or rot on the plant if adequate pollination does not occur. Pollination is affected by temperature, moisture, and the presence of pollinators (aka bees). If any of those are out of whack, you'll find shrivelled up zucchini (or squash of any kind).

- If your garden is short of bees, try hand pollinating.
If you still don't get zucchini - call us, we'd be glad to share some of ours.