CHRIS RUNDLE

KEEP YOUR EYE ON YOUR COURGETTES OR THEY MIGHT SOON BE MARROWS, SAYS CHRIS, WHO SHARES SOME RECIPES

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YEARS of experience as an amateur gardener have taught me one particular lesson: never turn your back on a courgette.

The courgette, you see, is a vegetable that is capable of performing a startling transformation. One minute you are lifting the leaves and admiring the newly formed baby vegetables and imagining how nice they would taste griddled and sprinkled with lemon juice, the next you find one of them has transmogrified into a threatening-looking blunt instrument.

This type of phenomenal growth spurt can even, apparently, take place after the courgette has been cut from its mother plant, hence the number of times friends have phoned and asked if I would like a few of their surplus 'courgettes' only for them to arrive 10 minutes later with a carrier bag bursting with marrows.