Sicilian zucchini
Lagenaria siceraria var. longissima
The Sicilian cucuzza — a bottle gourd eaten young as a summer squash, best run up a stout trellis so its long fruit hang straight.
Spacing & sowing
- Plant spacing
- 2 ft 11 in
- In-row spacing
- 2 ft 6 in
- Between rows
- 5 ft 11 in
- Square-foot density
- 1 per square
- Sow depth
- 0.8 in
Calendar (from your frost dates)
- Sow indoors
- 14 days before the last spring frost
- Sow direct
- 14 days after the last spring frost
- Plant out
- 14 days after the last spring frost
- First harvest
- 75 days after the last spring frost
- Harvest ends
- at the first fall frost
Growing
- Type
- Vegetable · Grown as an annual
- Botanical family
- Cucurbit (squash family)
- Sunlight
- Full sun
- Watering
- Moderate–high
- Soil
- Deep, rich, warm and free-draining
- Feeding
- Tomato & vegetable
- Frost tolerant
- No
- Season
- Warm Season
- Harvest type
- Continuous Harvest
- Start from
- seed
- Flowering
- White, opening at dusk and worked by hawkmoths — midsummer until the first frost.
- Pruning
- Pinch the leading shoot once it reaches the top of its support; most of the female flowers come on the side-shoots that follow.
Growth stages
- 0 d Sow seeds
- 8 d Germination
- 50 d Flowering
- 58 d Fruiting
- 70 d Harvest
Harvest
- When
- First fruits come roughly ten weeks from sowing, once the nights are reliably warm — midsummer onward, then without a pause until the first frost kills the vine outright. Cut in the cool of the morning, while the skin is still soft.
- What to look for
- Take them at 20–45 cm, while the skin is pale green, faintly downy and marked easily with a thumbnail. Past about 60 cm the flesh goes spongy and the seeds harden; left alone the fruit runs on to a meter or more and dries to a hard shell — fine for a birdhouse, no use in the pot.
- How to harvest
- Cut the stalk with a knife or snips a couple of centimeters above the fruit; the vine is tough and wiry, and pulling tears out the node the fruit grew from. Trellised fruit hang clear and come away cleanly — ground-grown ones curl and have to be turned to find the stalk.
- How often
- Every day or two at the height of summer: a cucuzza can put on 15 cm in twenty-four hours, and hard picking is what keeps the female flowers coming. A well-picked vine gives a dozen or more usable fruit.
- Storing the crop
- Keeps a week loosely wrapped in the fridge; the soft skin bruises, so don't stack anything on it. Raw it freezes badly — dice and cook it down first, or pickle it in spiced vinegar. The tender shoot tips and young leaves are picked alongside as tenerumi and used the same day.
Companions
Nasturtium at the foot of the trellis to take the aphids and French marigold along the row for the beetles; bush beans do well in the shade it throws and leave nitrogen behind. The usual bee plants matter less here than they would beside a courgette — these flowers open at dusk and are worked by moths, so what helps most is leaving a corner of the garden unlit and unsprayed after dark. Keep it clear of potatoes, which want the same feed and the same water at the same moment.
Pests & problems
- Aphids Aphids clustered on the growing tips
- Cucumber beetle Cucumber beetles chewing the leaves and blossoms
- Spider mites Spider mites in a hot, dry spell
- Slugs & snails Slugs and snails on newly set-out plants
- Anthracnose Anthracnose spotting leaves and fruit in wet weather
- Bacterial wilt Bacterial wilt carried in by cucumber beetles
- Downy mildew Downy mildew through a long humid spell
- Powdery mildew Powdery mildew on the older leaves from midsummer
Garden allies
Beneficial predators that hunt this plant's pests — grow their favourite flowers nearby to recruit them. companion plant
- Big-eyed bug Geocoris spp.
A stubby 3 mm bug with enormous wrap-around eyes, working the soil surface and the low foliage for aphids, mites, thrips and insect eggs. It is the main natural check on chinch bugs in a lawn and it is killed outright by insecticide.
- Garden birds Passeriformes
Both things are true: birds strip your currants and a brood of blue tits takes several thousand caterpillars out of one fruit tree in a fortnight. Net what you must and welcome them everywhere else — a nest box near the apples is worth more than a spray.
- Green lacewing Chrysoperla carnea
Its bristly larvae — "aphid lions" — impale aphids, mealybugs, thrips, and mite colonies, eating hundreds a week. Adults feed on nectar and pollen from small open flowers and overwinter in hollow stems left standing.
- Ladybird (lady beetle) Coccinellidae
The gardener’s favorite ally: adults and their alligator-shaped larvae each eat thousands of aphids, plus scale, mealybugs, and other soft-bodied sap-suckers. Grow flat, open flowers for the adults and never spray a colony that ladybird larvae are already working.
- Minute pirate bug Orius spp.
A pinhead-sized true bug that is the best natural check on thrips, and happily spears aphids, mites, and insect eggs too. It needs pollen when prey is scarce, so keep something flowering nearby.
- Rove beetle Staphylinidae
Slim, quick beetles with short wing cases that hunt in soil and litter, taking root-fly eggs and larvae, fungus-gnat larvae, and mites. Mulch and undisturbed ground keep them resident year-round.
- Soldier beetle Cantharidae
Soft-winged beetles seen mating on flower heads in high summer; adults and larvae both take aphids and soft grubs. Open composite flowers are their landing pads and hunting grounds.
- Spiders Araneae
Webs, ambushes, and night patrols make spiders the garden’s steadiest generalist predators, taking whatever flies or crawls past. Mulch, ground cover, and undisturbed corners keep the population dense.
- Aphid midge Aphidoletes aphidimyzaHunts Aphids
A tiny midge whose orange maggots paralyze aphids and drink them dry, twenty or more each. Sold as a greenhouse biological control and resident outdoors wherever there are small nectar flowers and an unsprayed aphid colony to find.
- Assassin bug ReduviidaeHunts Aphids
A patient ambusher with a curved beak it drives into whatever it catches — caterpillars, beetles, bugs, and the occasional bee, so count it a generalist rather than a specialist. It will jab a careless finger too, so admire it and leave it be.
- Beneficial nematodes Steinernema & Heterorhabditis spp.Hunts Slugs & snails
Microscopic worms watered onto damp soil that hunt down soil-dwelling grubs and release a bacterium that kills them within days. Timing is the whole thing: warm, damp soil and a small target grub, which means late summer for most of what they are used against.
- Centipedes ChilopodaHunts Slugs & snails
Flat, fast, one pair of legs to a segment — and a predator, unlike the slow round millipede it is constantly confused with. It hunts slugs, cutworms, springtails and woodlice by night under mulch and stones. Learn the difference and leave this one alone.
- Damsel bug NabidaeHunts Aphids
A slender, mantis-armed bug that grabs aphids, small caterpillars, and thrips in low crops and meadowy edges. Leave a strip of unmown grasses and flowers for it to overwinter in.
- Dragonflies & damselflies OdonataHunts Aphids
Aerial hunters that take mosquitoes, midges and small flies on the wing all day, and whose larvae spend a year or more clearing the same insects from the water. A pond with planted margins and no fish is the way to have them.
- Frogs & toads AnuraHunts Slugs & snails
A resident toad works the beds every night for slugs, cutworms, and weevils. Recruit them with water — even a sunken basin pond — plus damp shade and an upturned-pot toad house; skip the slug pellets that poison their prey.
- Ground beetle CarabidaeHunts Slugs & snails
Fast, glossy night hunters that patrol the soil surface for slugs, cutworms, and root-fly larvae. Give them daytime cover — thick perennial edges, stepping stones, a log — and skip the tillage that wrecks their burrows.
- Hedgehog Erinaceus europaeusHunts Slugs & snails
A European animal, and worth saying so plainly: there are no hedgehogs in North America, and the ally that does the same night shift here is the toad, the opossum or the ground beetle. Where they do occur, cut a gap in the fence and skip the pellets.
- Hoverfly SyrphidaeHunts Aphids
Bee-mimicking flies whose legless larvae graze aphid colonies clean while the adults pollinate. A ribbon of shallow, nectar-rich flowers kept in bloom all season recruits wave after wave of them.
- Parasitic wasps Braconidae & TrichogrammaHunts Aphids
Tiny, stingless wasps that lay eggs in or on caterpillars, aphids, and moth eggs — the white cocoons riding a hornworm are their calling card, so leave that caterpillar be. Umbel flowers with shallow nectar keep the adults fuelled.
- Praying mantis MantidaeHunts Aphids
A sit-and-wait ambusher that snatches caterpillars, beetles, and anything else that wanders close — friend and foe alike, so count it a mixed blessing. Tall, structured plantings give it perches and egg-case anchors.
- Predatory mites Phytoseiulus & AmblyseiusHunts Spider mites
Fast orange mites that hunt spider mites egg-by-egg, and cousins that clear thrips and fungus-gnat larvae. Sold as a biological control for greenhouses; outdoors they follow humidity — mist and mulch, don’t dust with sulfur.
- Salamanders & newts CaudataHunts Slugs & snails
Damp-loving hunters of slugs, worms, woodlice and beetle larvae that spend the day under a log or a stone and work the beds at night. Companions to the toads: they want the same damp shade, the same log pile, and the same absence of slug pellets.
- Snakes & lizards Colubridae & PhrynosomatidaeHunts Slugs & snails
A garter snake works the beds for slugs and voles and a fence lizard clears grasshoppers off a sunny wall. Almost every snake a gardener meets is harmless and useful; give them a log pile, a warm flat stone and a bit of cover and they stay.
Germination & growth
- Germination temp
- 70–86°F
- Min soil temp
- 64 °F
- Photoperiod
- day neutral
Companion planting
Good neighbors
Keep apart
Did you know?
Not a squash at all but a bottle gourd — which is why the vine borer that guts a courgette usually passes this one by.
The Cottage Garden Companion — the gardener's herbarium at cottagegardencompanion.com