Published 7:00 am Thursday, August 22, 2024
DEER PARK, Wash. — Eric Elithorp has to harvest his zucchini at least three times a week. Sometimes more.
“You can almost see it grow,” Elithorp said. “If you get a 90-degree day, sometimes you’ve got to even pick it every day, it grows so fast.”
The same goes for James Rowley’s zucchini crop.
“They’re very prolific. … You can literally harvest them every day,” Rowley said. “(With) the summer heat and the water on … you’ve got to keep the plants picked just to keep it going.”
Both farmers raise zucchini and an assortment of other produce in Deer Park, Wash., 22 miles north of Spokane.
Elithorp’s squash field consists of seven 200-foot rows on about half an acre of the 20-acre farm.
He raises the classic, dark green zucchini alongside golden, round and striped zucchini. He also grows other squashes, tomatoes, cucumbers, broccoli, melons and berries.
Rowley devotes at least 10,000 linear feet to summer squash on his 40-acre farm. He grows pattypan squash and yellow, crookneck, straightneck, one-ball and eight-ball zucchini. He also raises winter squash, beans, cucumbers, peas, carrots, corn, hay, cattle, hogs and stone fruit.
Zucchini has been a mainstay for both Elithorp and Rowley as long as they’ve been farming.
“Zucchini’s easy,” Rowley said. “It’s a summertime favorite.”
“It’s one of the most popular vegetables,” Elithorp agreed.
And how.
In 2023, U.S. farmers produced about 6 million hundredweight of fresh market squash and harvested 40,100 acres, valued at about $215 million.
Fresh market is likely summer squash, but it’s hard to distinguish one type from another statistically, said Steven Fennimore, director of the University of California Cooperative Extension’s Vegetable Research and Information Center.
“Almost every home gardener includes zucchini in their garden … because the plant is such a prolific producer,” said Jonathan Schultheis, vegetable culture, production and physiology professor and extension horticulture specialist at North Carolina State University in Raleigh, N.C.
“Everybody in this area loves to plant zucchini in their backyard,” said Rowley, the Washington farmer. “It’s fast, easy and productive. Who doesn’t like zucchini bread?”
Rowley sells through a Community Supported Agriculture program and at various Spokane-area farmers markets.
Elithorp sells Wednesdays and Saturdays at the Spokane Farmers Market and Saturday at the Liberty Lake Farmers Market. He also sells some wholesale, through the LINC Foods cooperative and Catholic Charities.
In June, Elithorp sold zucchini for about $3 a pound. During the summer’s peak, it goes for about $2.50 per pound.
“Especially early on, it’s real popular, because a lot of people haven’t had their gardens kick in yet,” Elithorp said.
Zucchini is so fast-producing, and so plentiful, that jokes about the crop’s productivity abound on social media.
“It’s important to lock your car doors, especially now,” one variation warns of the prolific vegetable. “Your friends, neighbors and even strangers might leave free zucchini in your car.”
“I think they’re funny,” Homestead, Fla., farmer David Torbert said.
He has 2,000 acres of zucchini and yellow squash, alongside green beans, wax beans, sweet corn and okra on more than 5,000 acres south of Miami.
Torbert harvests all winter in Homestead, from October to April.
Torbert said he hopes to receive $16 per box and averages about 800 to 1,000 boxes per acre.
A box is 18 to 20 pounds of zucchini.
“If you don’t spend too much and you have an average crop, you’ll be able to farm again next year,” Torbert said.
For Torbert, 120 bins of zucchini is a good day, but the yields are highly variable. A bin is 40 boxes.
“We’ve had it where you could pick 120, and the next week the weather changes and you’re only picking 30 bins a day, and then the next week, you’re picking 240 bins every day,” he said. “The weather and the bees pollinating, there’s big swings in it. … Without bees, things like zucchini and yellow squash are gone.”
Many larger farms raise squash on contract, he said.
He’s grown zucchini for Publix supermarkets throughout the Southeast for 10 years. His father previously grew the same crops for 40 years.
If not for Publix, which sells American-grown produce, Torbert probably wouldn’t raise squash because the cost of production is lower for Mexican imports: “It’s too risky.”
“They’ll send squash into the U.S. under what it costs us just to produce it, not even to put it into a box to sell,” he said. “That has cut back on a lot of American growers growing it.”
Zucchini seed sold in stores comes from Idaho, Washington or South America, he said.
Zucchini is a hardier vegetable than yellow squash, which is more prone to diseases and blemishes, Torbert said.
His main squash issue is the pathogen phytophthera capsici, which moves in moist soil and can kill the entire plant.
“It’ll start in a patch the size of your truck, then the next day it’ll be the size of your house. The next day it could be 5 acres; in a week’s time you could lose 80 acres if it keeps running,” he said.
The best prevention is removing a host crop for at least three years, he said. Spores can reside in yellow squash, zucchini, tomatoes, eggplants or peppers.
Treatments are available, but Torbert’s not sure how effective they are.
“I tell all the chemical reps, ‘If you fix this, you’ll have something,’” he said.
When a question arises, most zucchini farmers turn to crop consultants, or one another, Torbert said.
“We kind of just put our heads together and figure it out,” he said.
Elithorp turns to his father “because he’s done it so long.”
Rowley consults old farm books from his grandfather, dating back to the late 1800s.
“Really, they’re kind of all the same problems — powdery mildew, damping off, hailstorms,” he said. “We do a lot of covering, being northern farmers. Most of our early stuff, or even outside, we’re covering at least through Memorial Day and then watching the forecasts and making sure.”
He uses a row crop cover, about an ounce per square yard.
Rowley tries to keep a mid-June “safety” crop in a hoop house, but most is grown outside.
“It just hasn’t been ‘usual’ for the past five to seven years,” he said. “We’ve peaked at 118 degrees.”
Frost has occurred as late as July 4 and as early as Aug. 28.
“Your growing window can go from 65 days to 100 days,” Rowley said.
Even during an unseasonably warm April, as farmers get antsy to plant, it’s best to wait, because that’s not the “true story,” he said.
This year he lost about 40 stone fruit trees, 10% to 15% of his overall operation, to the winter cold, and reports “biblical aphids” damaging his kale and chard.
“We’ve got aphids riding ladybugs, we’ve got aphids on trees that usually don’t have aphids at all,” he said.
“In my experience, it’s about one out of every three years — you get a good year, a ‘We made it’ year and an ‘Oof’ year,” Rowley continued. “That varies on the crops, too. Last year was a great peach year, this year … with the frost and everything, I’m not going to say it’s an ‘Oof’ year yet.”
This was a below-average zucchini year, he said, with a late planting and damping off in his first outside crop, which caused it to fail to germinate. That required six to eight rows to be replanted.
“We had some big issues on some of our varieties but those that did produce did well,” Rowley said.
Schultheis, the North Carolina researcher, gets to witness the “cutting edge” of the zucchini world.
“There is quite a bit of activity in zucchini breeding at this time,” he said.
He has offered cultivar evaluation for private seed companies over the last three decades.
Six to 10 international companies are involved in improving and marketing zucchini, Schultheis said.
Most are being developed for the fresh market.
He considers the newest lines for yield, color and improved traits such as disease resistance or no scratchy spines on their skin.
About 90% of seed is sold to commercial producers and 10% to home gardeners, he said.
Many seed packets sold to gardeners in stores are older cultivars, Schultheis said.
One of the more interesting items being considered is the use of parthenocarpy, development of a fruit without prior fertilization, he said.
“Thus the zucchini fruit would lack seeds and potentially produce fruit earlier,” Schultheis said.
Schultheis expects zucchini demand to remain relatively steady.
Small upticks are possible as consumers become more health-conscious, he said.
“People will put zucchini on pizza, for example, as a topping,” he said.
Torbert, the Florida farmer, pointed to recent popularity surges for zucchini spirals and “pasta” in lieu of noodles.
“It’s trending more and more,” he said.
In Washington, Elithorp tries to sell his zucchini earlier in the year, when there’s less competition.
“In the peak of the summer, pretty much everybody has at least some small quantity,” he said.
Demand slows around the beginning of the school year in the Northwest.
“We’re definitely winding down. … We’re entering winter squash and everybody’s kind of burned out on zucchini by that point,” Rowley said. “They’ve made their bread and stored and froze theirs.”
Demand was above-average for Elithorp’s zucchini this year.
He’s not certain why.
Rowley also experienced strong demand.
“Folks that usually have a few backyard plants didn’t do well, which may have pushed demand up,” he said.
Elithorp said he definitely intends to keep raising zucchini. In fact, he wouldn’t mind a longer season.
“Once you get it going, it’s pretty easy to grow,” he said. “Most years work out pretty well for us.”
Torbert
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Elithorp Farm
ZUCCHINI
AT A GLANCE
• Zucchini, a member of the summer squash family of cucurbits (Cucurbita pepo), owes its name to the Italian word for a small pumpkin or squash, “zucchina.”
• Zucchini can grow quickly, adding about 1 to 2 inches per day and producing mature fruit in as little as 35–55 days. A single plant can produce up to 10 pounds of zucchini, depending on how well it’s cared for. (Source: HGTV)
• Widely considered a vegetable, botanically zucchini is a fruit. Many dishes include use of raw or cooked squash as well as its delicate flowers, which are frequently battered and fried.
• Generally the most popular of the summer squashes, demand for zucchini continues to grow steadily in the United States. It can be grown nearly anywhere with consistently warm summer weather. To keep up with demand, the United States is the world’s top importer, sourcing primarily from Mexico.
• The top squash-growing states in the U.S. are California, Florida, Georgia and New York.
• Historians believe squash was first grown in Central and South America, then taken to Europe, where Italians more fully developed summer cultivars such as zucchini.
Source: https://www.producebluebook.com/know-your-produce-commodity/zucchini/
