I had never grown courgettes before.

For some reason, I thought they would be really tricky. People used to tell me about the manual pollination, training them over frames, staggering the harvest, stopping them from rotting. Quite frankly, it sounded too much like hard work. I decided to stick with easy stuff like runner beans and the occasional potplant tomato.

But this year I planted courgettes.

I didn’t bother with the hand pollination, the trellis work or any of the other palaver people had warned me about. I just stuck seeds in mud, applied water and waited. (My kind of gardening).

I had heard so many “horror stories” about people getting gluts that I planted a mere two seeds back in April, which I transplanted in May and by June I was the proud consumer of a small but perfectly formed, dark green courgette.

The two plants seemed to be going rather slowly, so I planted two more in May (not much happened) and another two in June.

Someone had told me you only get 10-15 courgettes from a single plant, so this all seemed like a good idea at the time.

But courgette-patience would have been a wonderful virtue and my lack of it now means I harvest near-marrow-sized courgettes on a daily basis.

The other week (clearly not having enough to do!), we kept a log of our week’s crop. We harvested – and somehow ate – 5kg of courgettes!

The June plants are only just getting going and, unbelievably, the April plants are still going strong, producing at least 4 courgettes a week.

Luckily we’ve got a few courgette recipes up our sleeves, for example:

• red lentil and courgette soup
• courgette and Roquefort soup
• butter-sautéed courgettes with red onion and balsamic vinegar
• courgette and dill salad
• courgette and chocolate cake

But our courgette output is increasing by the day and I suspect I’m about to hit mutiny at the kitchen table unless I come up with some new ideas pretty soon!

So I was wondering if any of the Green Girls Global readers have been facing a similar problem?
What are your top tips for enjoying courgettes?

Any sneaky tricks for hiding them in dishes so the family won’t know they’ve been “courgetted” again?
How many courgette plants does a family really need?

I’d love to hear your top tips and courgette stories!