Courgette/Zucchini Black Coral
Why I grow it
Black Coral is the sort of courgette you grow because you actually want courgettes — lots of them.
It produces beautiful glossy, incredibly dark green fruit on an open, bushy plant that's easy to pick from. It's productive, reliable and wonderfully useful in the kitchen: exactly the sort of plant that earns its place in a summer potager.
At a glance
Type: Courgette / zucchini
Hybrid: F1
Fruit: Glossy, very dark green, cylindrical
Growth: Open bush
Position: Full sun
Harvest: Around 15–20 cm for lovely tender fruit
Maturity: Around 45–65 days from transplant
Best for: Everyday cooking, grilling, roasting and baking Kings Seeds NZ
In the kitchen
This is your do-everything courgette.
Pick the fruit young and use it raw in salads, slice it lengthways for the barbecue, roast it, sauté it with garlic and olive oil, grate it into fritters, pasta sauces and baking, or turn it into one of the approximately 4,762 recipes required when courgette season reaches full production.
The flowers are edible too — and if you decide later that one of your recipes deserves a permanent home here, we'll add it.
In the garden
Black Coral grows as an open bush rather than a sprawling vine. That open habit makes the fruit easier to spot and harvest and allows better airflow through the plant — particularly useful with courgettes, which can be prone to powdery mildew. Kings Seeds NZ
Pick regularly while the fruit is young and tender. Ignore the plant for several days in midsummer and it will inevitably conceal a marrow roughly the dimensions of a nuclear submarine underneath one leaf.
Care
Grow in rich, fertile, well-drained soil in full sun. Keep moisture consistent, particularly during flowering and fruiting, and feed regularly through the growing season.
Give it decent space — Kings recommends approximately 60 cm between plants — and avoid routinely wetting the foliage when watering. Kings Seeds NZ
What you'll receive
One healthy, established plant grown here at A Garden Between. Plants naturally vary in size and shape and may be supplied in reused nursery pots or growing bags — perfectly useful plastic doesn't need replacing simply because it doesn't match.